Bone Gate
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the Gboys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and oldfriends may not be what they seem.
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Bone Gate, Prologue  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive: all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

xxx: Text on screen

Prologue

The dream coalesced again, forming itself from the harmless and habitual snippets and scenes her subconscious mind was weaving. The asphalt beneath her feet hardened further, grew gloss and ripples that sported razor-sharp edges, until it became a plain of onyx. The red of the stoplight flared and grew until it covered the entire sky, and took on a murky cast.

The sounds of the dream – voices, music, street noises – blurred warped into a ceaseless keen of wind.

Her dream-self cried out in protest. She didn't want to be here again. She didn't want to see this again.

Dream-Duo appeared upon the plain, nude, and within moments was wrapped in gray wisps. At first she thought the wisps were fog, but then they grew faces of hollowness and shadows, and began to whimper. Noises like the cries of damned children, lost forever, joined the wail of the wind. One by one, each wispy mouth fastened itself onto Duo's flesh, until he was clothed in undulating stormcloud-leeches. Duo's face was deathly pale, and tears poured from his eyes, though his face was set in a cold, grim expression.

A single red rose upon a long, winding stem appeared in the gloom, hovering in the air. The vine grew, winding towards Duo and wrapping around his neck. Once the pale throat was encircled, the vine twisted, and barbed black thorns pierced deep into Duo's throat, and the rose seemed to suck the blood into itself, down the vine.

From beneath the rose, the onyx plain shuddered, and the bones began to rise up.

They were old bones, stripped clean long ago, worn to shades of ivory and yellow by ages unimaginable to her. The long bones of the body – femur and humerus, ulna and radius, tibia and fibula – were the scaffolding, long columns topped with pelvic bones, through which ribs and vertebrae were woven to hold the structure together. Skulls stared out from niches, and skeletal hands extended from the structure, reaching desperately for salvation that would never come. It was far, far too late.

The Bone Gate. The nearly-impenetrable barrier between the living and the dead.

Nearly.

The vine contracted, pulling Duo to one of the massive closed doors. He hung limp and unresisting,seemingly drained, as skeletal hands grasped his arms, his legs, his throat. There was a look of suffering and unbearable, inescapable horror on his face, but she was helpless in this dream.

And in reality... In waking reality it was worse.

She was distracted from her thoughts when Quatre appeared. He, too, was naked, but none of the foggy wraiths attached themselves to him. He was pale, clutching at his chest, and he fell heavily against the door. He, too, was grasped by the bones, held helpless.

The Bone Gate began to glow, a deep purple shade that emanated from between the doors, and both boys started to scream. She could see the soft, soft skin on both of them begin to melt into the bones.

When she, too, screamed, she woke soaked in sweat and shaking, and did not sleep again that night.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: The Bone Gate, Chapter 1  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive:  all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

xxx: Text on screen

Chapter One

Heero POV 

Heero stared at the laptop screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard combination that would send the message.

This was frivolous. Unnecessary.

Had anything untoward happened to Duo -- happened to any of the other Gundam pilots -- Une would have informed him. Informed him with considerable alacrity. She knew perfectly well that there were nonnegotiable conditions on the Gundam pilots' agreement to let her keep them separated.

She'd kept them all up to date on accidental tear gas exposure and influenza, stitches and sprains -- Wufei really needed to go through some physical therapy to re-strengthen that ankle, it seemed – even permitting the pilots to give input on mission planning for the other's missions.

Anything except allowing them direct contact. Heaven forbid they be on the same continent, or in the same LaGrange cluster.

Heero snorted. Not, of course, that they were forbidden to e-mail or vidcall one another. But Une had been admirably direct with the pilots, telling them that the sniveling politicians who feared a Gundam-pilot organized coup would monitor all such contact, and that frequent inter-pilot contacts would escalate governmental paranoia. The politicians might look upon frequent contacts as a sign of conspiracy, or the potential for one, and might do something that would lead to... "Escalations that were in no one's best interests" had been Une's phrase. There still was talk among some of the more extreme Earth Sphere political factions of war crimes prosecution, whispers that public safety might require locking up the former terrorists... or even more drastic action.

So the pilots did not talk to each other much. Or talk much at all.

Of course, Heero had set up this secret secure electronic connection between the pilots, which he was almost certain was invisible to even the most skilled of the government's hackers. But it was purely in case of emergency. The more it was used, the more likely it was that the government watchdogs would notice it. And if it was noticed, that would certainly lead to "escalations."

So this message really was an unnecessary security risk. Duo was certainly fine.

It took Heero a moment to realize that the deep rumbling growl filling his office was emerging from his own throat.

Damn them, damn them, damn them, trying to keep him separated from his... from his... From Duo. From all the pilots. Damn Une. Damn the politicians. Interloping, interfering in what was not theirs to control...

There was a pulse as the fury poured through his mind and heart. He felt heat surge through him, and the world suddenly became sharp and pellucid: the scent of old coffee grounds, nervous sweat, someone's popcorn in a distant office, becoming painfully clear mingling with too many perfumes and aftershaves; impossibly sharp edges and textures in a room almost bleached of color; snippets of conversations:

"Out of coffee again? Doesn't anyone else ever..."  
"...so I said yes, of course, but to put me on the spot like that..."  
"...Unacceptably poor performance at the firing range..."  
"...Placement is the key with these little buggers..."  
"Sir, yes sir!"

And Heero's hands clenched into white-knuckled fists above his keyboard, nails driving into his palms.

No! Control... control...

He took a deep breath. Another. A regulated count. Another. Count. Another. He was able to make his hands loosen. Another deep breath.

The hyperawareness of L1 Preventer's Headquarters around him receded, his senses dulling.

This is not right

He looked again at the message on screen..

Duo. Are you well?

A risk? Yes. An unnecessary risk?

He'd been riding the sharp edge of his temper almost continually the last few weeks.

Had all but bounced Agent Saam out on his butt in the hallway throwing the agent out of his office. Saam was a loathsome little weasel, but he'd had a legitimate reason to speak to Heero...

Not in my damn office! Slimy bastard stays out of my space!

An unnecessary risk?

Four words.

Duo. Are you well?

The click of the keyboard echoed through his office.

Message sent

Duo POV

Four words.

Duo thought about them for weeks. Five weeks.

No reply made  
Just  
thinking.

The answer had seemed to be positive when he'd first gotten the mail, but something had kept him from replying.

L2 had been his home for as long as he could remember. Whatever parents he'd had had come from L2, or at least died there.

Une had promised not to tell the others, not to tell how hard he'd taken the separation. Anti-depressants, even a short stay as a special guest at his therapist's hospital hadn't really made it better. It just made it acceptable.

All horrible things become acceptable if you don't really want to die and there's no way around them. Duo Maxwell would never get to live with Heero Yuy, never get to tell him about loving him, or kiss him, or dance with him. Duo Maxwell was a murderer, a terrorist, barely worth not putting in some dark jail and all the drugs his therapist could shove at him wasn't really keeping his thoughts clear.

Suicide would never be believed. Well, unless he left a body decaying in the tub, and he was rather fond of his body the way it was and he didn't think Heero had any inclination towards necrophilia. He just really needed to be someone else.

For all he knew they'd tagged him with some kind of identifying chip during one of his exams. He couldn't just walk away and if he screwed up, the others would pay as well. Une had made that very clear.

It had taken weeks to clarify his mission. He almost didn't have the nerve to leave his cage. It was a cage they'd made for him too, a very nice prison where he could be put to their uses. Duo Maxwell would not be used.

What he wanted he couldn't have.  
He wouldn't be free.  
He couldn't have Heero.  
Duo Maxwell had no reason or will to continue.

It had taken him five weeks to release from all that he'd thought he'd held to.

He lived in a nice apartment, on the thirtieth floor. Preventer uniform undone at the collar, at bag of food in one hand, he knocked on his neighbor's door.

She was a single mom, three kids, only one of which was hers. Duo was going to miss her and her kids.

When she opened her door, she grinned. "Duo! I wasn't expecting you home so early. Are you okay? Are you hurt again?"

"Naw," Duo said, giving her a wink. "But I'm gonna go on a new mission later tonight and well, I wouldn't be back for a little while. So I wanted you to have the perishable stuff in my fridge and things."

"Duo! Thank you! Will you be gone long? Do you have time for dinner?"

"No, I really have to get ready. There's so much to do. It's a dangerous mission, Miss Taniko. I have paid my lease for the next two years. if something should happen to me. I have arranged that the funds be transferred to your lease."

"Oh!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "I don't want your lease! I want you to hurry and come back!"

He hugged her, a hand comforting on the back of her head. "I care about what's most important to me, Miss Taniko and I have follow my heart. There is someone I'm in love with and this mission may be the only way to be free to be with him, someday."

She pulled back and looked up at him, smiling. "You will be with him again. Just give it some time. Don't do anything rash!"

Duo's heart raced. She knew him too well, but he gave a bright smile, toothy and cocky. "No worries! You know how I get sometimes, that's all. It's just one of those days."

"See you tomorrow?"

"Sure thing!" Duo gave her a wave and went across the hall to his own apartment. He peeled off his Preventer uniform for the last time, leaving it on the floor, a trail to the bathroom.

He had the whole plan. It was all going to work so smoothly. Freedom, the only freedom he could have.

The shower washed away doubts, brought in a peace. Heero could self-destruct. Duo understood more how that would feel, the peace.

Still wet, he picked up the blade he'd kept with him in the war, since he was a child. Wearing just worn blue jeans, he took his braid in one hand, caressing it, saying goodbye.

There was no turning back.

He replied with his own five words.

No, but I will be.

Just on time, Preventers were at his door. "Mr. Maxwell? Are you okay?"

Miss Taniko was very dependable.

"Yup, fine. Go away," Duo yelled, over his shoulder as he opened his balcony door. "Don't need any help, thanks!"

"Mr. Maxwell! Please, let us in! We just want to make sure you're okay!"

Duo boosted himself up on to the railing of his balcony, blade in one hand, braid in the other. He tilted his head back and let the fake star light fall over his face. It was always just so hard to really let  
go. There was no place for Duo Maxwell when he couldn't be free though.

The mission would fail though if the media didn't show up to see this tragedy. If this could buy the freedom of his friends, then the media had to see it.

His door had been reinforced, very recently. The first shoulder to ram his door didn't do anything but cause his would-be rescuer to curse his name.

He sighed. His blade cut into his braid, sawed, and as quick as he could, faster because he couldn't stop, if he did, he'd try to save his braid. He could feel Sister Helen's hands on his shoulders, but … but  
he had something more important now and it would never work without his braid.

Finally his blade was through and he let the long beautiful treasure of his hair fall. He had to go with the hair, timing was everything.

Frightened. His heart in his throat, he flew again, like a gundam pilot, like he was with Scythe again, arms out, now short hair whipping against his face. Timing, timing was everything!

Below….

"Oh my god! He did it. Are you seeing this? The legendary Gundam pilot known as Death as just leapt from his balcony! We are told that there's no way anyone, not even a gundam pilot could survive this fall!"

The camera followed the falling body down, losing it only briefly as it passed behind the huge sign that advertised the place. It slowed the progress, and the sign shook with the impact… what fell from the sign was battered beyond being human and the camera shifted, the cameraman's stomach adding an additional soundtrack to the recording.

"Oh my god, he'd dead. Duo Maxwell is dead. It's the end of an era! He was perhaps the greatest hero of our time! What a horrible tragedy!"

Behind the sign, one Ian Finn held to the railing with both hands, swinging, picking up momentum, until he let go and dove through the open window into the waiting arms of lawless sweeper scum that were his life long buddies.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: The Bone Gate,  
Chapter Two  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4  
Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive: all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts  
xxx: Text on screen

Heero

The first 24 hours after he'd sent the message to Duo were the worst. He'd had no idea what to expect.

Once 24 hours had passed with no reply, he knew something was wrong. He knew to expect trouble.

This was familiar territory, at least.

Action was justified.

He smiled and turned to his laptop. Step one of dealing with any trouble was to identify the problem.

He spent the next four weeks obsessively following Duo Maxwell's activities. He noted every bank transaction, learning which grocers Duo preferred, and noting that his diet was well-balanced, but somewhat lacking in overall caloric consumption. Either he forgot to eat meals on a regular basis, or someone was providing him with food free of charge. Heero was supremely irritated to discover how far behind the L2 Preventer's medical department was in the mandated regular checkups. It made it impossible to determine if Duo had lost weight.

He made a mental note to send a scathing note on the topic to Une later. He read through each mission report Duo submitted. Read through the mission reports Duo's partners submitted. Read through Duo's  
performance reviews, psychological evaluations, e-mails, and expense reports.

Everything seemed fine. In the eyes of those around him, Duo was behaving as he always had. His performance at work seemed excellent.

But there were little things that made the hairs on the back of Heero's neck raise. The apartment lease, pre-paid two years in advance was atypical of Duo's mobile lifestyle, and something about the rider which transferred the lease to a neighbor's name in the event of his death gave Heero a chill. Duo had become unusually diligent in turning in his expense reports and other administrative paperwork in the last week or two, rather than letting them linger until the latest date possible. Possibly most puzzling was the complete lack of financial transactions during the vacation he'd taken a month or two ago. E-mails to coworkers had indicated that Duo was planning to go camping, but even then, Heero would have expected some transportation records, food purchases, or even purchases of camping supplies. None. Nothing. It was like Duo had been locked in a cellar for the duration.

Something was wrong, but Heero had no idea at all of what it was.

Heero's temper had gotten even shorter over the last five weeks. Agent Saam had bolted from the men's room without even fastening his pants at the glare Heero had given him. Heero had overheard the clerical staff doing jan-ken-pon to see who the unlucky person was who delivered his mail each day. His neighbor's dog had taken to rolling on its back and whimpering whenever Heero passed by.

It occurred to Heero that perhaps he wasn't entirely well either. The periods of sensory hyper-awareness were becoming more frequent, and would sometimes leave him with a headache so severe that his vision blurred with each pulse of pain. He'd developed trouble sleeping, waking with so much energy filling his body that he was amazed he couldn't see it arcing between his fingers in Jacob's ladders, and only a long, long run, or hours of lifting weights, would ease the feeling. And he craved the presence of the pilots, wanted them near him. He wanted to see them, hear their voices, but even more, he wanted to be able to smell them, touch them, know what they were doing.

He craved Duo most of all. He wondered if this was how an addiction felt. He smirked to himself at the thought of Duo as a controlled substance, and then decided it wasn't funny at all.

Quatre

The throbbing in his head was almost intolerable. Quatre reached for the bottle of ibuprofen he'd taken to keeping in his desk drawer, and the simple motion almost undid his control over his nauseous stomach. He sat perfectly, perfectly still, keeping his breathing as shallow as possible.

He didn't want to embarrass himself by having to bolt out of his office into the restroom yet again.

Slowly, the urge to vomit passed, and with much greater care, he retrieved the bottle and took twice the recommended dosage. It was the same amount he'd taken just two hours before. It was silly to think the painkiller would start helping now, but in order to get anything more potent, he'd have to see a doctor. The trusted family doctor, of course, and while he didn't think she'd actually break confidentiality, his sisters would find out that he had scheduled an appointment. Then he'd be asked, oh-so-solicitously, whatever could be troubling him. And then would come the hinting that he had lingering troubles from the war, that he needed to seek treatment and therapy, and perhaps needed to reconsider what else in his life right now might be due to trauma... Such as his filthy, blasphemous, sexual relationship with another man.

Coming out to his sisters had not gone nearly as well as he'd hoped it would.

Coming home to his sisters had not gone nearly as well as he'd hoped it would, either. He'd taken to thinking of them in political blocs, which he felt bad about – but it really was an apt metaphor. There was the block that were still angry over his defiance of Father's wishes. That one could be broken down to the bloc who wrote the whole thing off to an act of adolescent rebellion, and thought he needed to be sent off to a rigidly disciplined school until he finally displayed some signs of maturity, and those who were still emotionally enraged by his betrayal. Amihan had gone so far as to accuse him of being just the same as the people who'd killed Father, implying that Oz wouldn't have had to go so far if it weren't for the Gundams.

Then there was the bloc of sisters who were very active in WEI, and resented that Father's will had dumped the controlling majority of stock into the hands of an inexperienced boy who knew nothing of business and whose sole qualification for a the privilege was the possession of a penis.

He completely understood their anger, and was willing to work with them – perhaps to put his stock into a trust controlled by them until he'd completed university, or even to sell it to them outright. If his Y chromosome conferred magical powers of executive decision-making, he hadn't noticed it yet. Perhaps having had Trowa's cock buried deep inside his ass had negated that particular power.

No. He wasn't going to get caustic and bitter. He wouldn't let the situation change him like that. Trowa wouldn't like it.

The pang of longing that thinking of Trowa invoked made him gasp aloud, aggravating his headache. He wanted Trowa next to him so badly sometimes that it felt as though some tiny bright part of his soul fell dark and died each time he finally made himself accept that it just couldn't happen. Sometimes he was afraid he was running out of those tiny bright parts.

Really, he told himself yet again, it would be wrong to have Trowa join him here. It would cause political problems – political problems that would have very personal effects on Trowa, with his undocumented status and total lack of citizenship. In return for his co-operation, Lady Une was blocking the war crimes investigations into the mercenary group with which Trowa had been affiliated. It wouldn't matter to some people that Trowa had only been a child, that he was just following the orders of the only people who would offer him a bed to sleep in and food to eat. As the sole survivor of the unit, they'd punish Trowa for actions he couldn't possibly have stopped.

Even if they could get around that – and Quatre had a few thoughts on the matter – how could he possibly bring his lover into the poisonous atmosphere his family home had become? The most frightening block of his sisters, the ones who were horrified that the darling baby boy of the Winner family was homosexual, would rip Trowa to shreds. They'd try to convince him that he'd corrupted and dirtied Quatre, that he wasn't good enough for Quatre, that his very existence was bad for Quatre. Trowa was strong enough not to let them destroy him, not to let them push him away from Quatre... but they could push Trowa away from himself. Trowa would bury his true self beneath his silent, blank mask again, and Quatre couldn't bear that happening again. Not when it would be his fault.

No, he couldn't bring Trowa here.

Quatre found himself walking over to one of the vases filled with red roses that filled his office. He bent down and literally buried his face in the blooms. The velvety petals were the most gentle touch he'd felt since he'd come home, and he let the scent drown the thoughts and longings. Even his headache seemed to ebb a little when he was enveloped by the roses.

It was funny, he thought, as drowsiness began to fill him. A vase of red roses had simply appeared in his office a few weeks ago. He hadn't known if they were part of some new decorating scheme, or possibly been given to him for some holiday he'd overlooked. They were just there. He hadn't liked them at first. The ornate scarlet blooms looked like blood to him, and they hadn't fit at all with the lighter color scheme he'd chosen for his office.

But the scent relieved his headaches, and he'd begun to order more. He had a half-dozen vases of the things in his office now. He couldn't quite believe he'd ordered that many, but it had been his signature there on the order forms. When his headaches were really bad, he sometimes didn't pay enough attention to the details of what he was doing. When they were at their worst, he couldn't even make his eyes focus properly. It was amazing that the worst slip-up he'd made had been ordering an overabundance of roses...

He was asleep at the table, head next to the vase of roses, when one of his executive assistants rapped on the door sharply and entered without being acknowledged. "Mr. Winner? Sorry to disturb you like this, but there was something on the news I knew you'd want to see right away."

Heero

Heero was finishing his highly-illegal download of Lady Une's personal files – the last place he had left to look for information about what was wrong with Duo – when the reply came.

No, but I will be.

Heero didn't know how long he would have stared at the message window on his laptop if an alert hadn't beeped. He'd been staring long enough to have an afterimage of those words burned onto his retinas, at least. The programmed agent that alerted him when any of the pilots were in the media opened a window of live news feed from L2.

The sounds of the news anchor blathering and the cameraman violently retching were drowned out by the crash as Heero's fist shattered the surface of his desk.

The laptop sat on the floor among the debris of the desk, showing that long, long, fall, that shuddering collision with the sign, the shattering thud of landing over and over.

He wouldn't do that. Not Duo. He wouldn't. He can't be... "No, but I will be". Will be what? Will be dead? Is dead well? He wouldn't think that. Would he? Wouldn't he? Could I have faked something like that? Could he? Yes... yes... But. Oh, god, Duo!

That long fall, shown over and over...

When the vidphone rang, he stabbed the answer button with enough force that his claw sent a chunk of it flying. What remained of the button was stained red with blood from clenched fists.

An image of Quatre, deathly pale with his fist pressed against his sternum appeared. "Heero!" Quatre's eyes widened further, and he sucked air in an audible agonized gasp. "You.. you saw."

Heero nodded once.

"Would Duo... would he really...?" Quatre's hand apparently spasmed against his chest, flashing the signal for 'More data required.' "He wouldn't, would he?"

"I don't know." Heero flashed the sign for 'assemble at safe house,' but he was far beyond registering the actual snarl in his voice. "But I will find out."

Quatre's eyes narrowed slightly, as he gave the barest of nods, but he continued to speak for the benefit of anyone tapping the line. "Heero... I think we need to be together to deal with this. I want us to be able to support one another."

"Ryoukai. We will gather at your location on L4. After. First I'm going to L2."

"Heero, I really don't think you should be alone right now."

"I'm going to L2. Now. Gather the others. Make sure they are..." Heero's lips twisted in a bitter smile. "Make sure they are well and wait for me on L4. I'll join you later."

He didn't wait for Quatre to acknowledge that before he cut the connection.

He picked up the laptop from the wreckage of his desk. He booked passage for L2, and sent out a message to Quatre, Wufei, and Trowa on his secure network.

Go to Quatre's. Stay until further orders.

He needed to know the other pilots were well. Needed to know his... his pack... were gathered, that he could join them, have them safely under his aegis. His pack? Yes. That was the term his heart had for them. More then friends. Almost family; almost, but the need to protect them, to lead them to have their scents and voices near him, all made him chose the word pack.

J had always said he wasn't entirely human. What was the point in denying it?

He needed his pack together, but could not wait for them to join him before he want to find Duo. Yes, They should gather to protect one another, and as soon as he could, he would join them. Hopefully with their last pack mate at his side.

Another message to Duo.

I am coming for you.

His hand shook as he hit the send key, and his vision blurred the Message sent notification with unshed tears.

Duo... please, please get that message. Be alive. Don't let me have waited too long. Grabbing his emergency travel duffel he had always kept in the office, he headed towards the Port. He had an entire flight to look through Une's purloined files.


	4. Chapter 4

Title: The Bone Gate

Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive, all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 3

Heero

The shuttle ride to L2 was another circle of Hell. As his laptop churned away, breaking the encryption on Une's most private, well-defended files, Heero was cut off from all news, unable to take action. It was a Hell of helpless waiting.

Not that Heero particularly believed in Hell, but it was an image that Duo had shared with him at one of the boarding schools they'd attended. Duo's class had been studying Dante's Inferno, and Duo had demonstrated an almost morbid fascination for the work, trying to discern exactly where in Hell he could anticipate arriving.

In the end, Duo had decided it was almost certain that he -- and his fellow pilots -- would end up in the Seventh Circle, Hell for the violent. Probably immersed in a river of boiling blood, although Duo had speculated that he himself might end up wandering in a desert of flaming sand. It wasn't until much later that Heero had looked up the reference and realized that Duo was probably trying to tell him he was gay.

Now Heero's stomach churned, remembering that the Seventh Circle also hosted suicides.

But Duo wouldn't... would he?

Heero cursed the accuracy of his memory for even the smallest of details concerning Duo and Duo's interests. According to Dante, suicides were transformed into thorn bushes, ripped at by harpies, condemned to silence until someone broke off one of the branches.

Condemned to silence until something broke him...

His Duo should never be condemned to silence. It was a fitting sentence for he himself, but not for his Duo.

But isn't that exactly what I allowed Une to do? Take him away from everyone he might have poured his heart out to? Told him to watch what he said, who he talked to.

Did he break?

Whether he broke or not – I failed him.

I condemned him. I told him to silence himself, and he obeyed me, and it might have killed him and I did nothing to protect him.

He followed my orders, he was mine to protect, and I failed him.

He curled in on himself, face hidden in his hands as much to keep trapped the misery twisting through his chest that wanted to escape through his mouth, as to hide his face. Yes, this was hell. And he deserved to be here.

Wufei

"Agent Chang?"

Wufei turned at the soft call, biting back a curse as hot coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup onto his fingers.

"Yes?" His tone was more curt than he'd intended, and he regretted it as Une's secretary flushed and tilted her head down even further, hiding behind her overgrown bangs. Damn it, did the woman have to behave as though she expected him to backhand her at any moment? He tried to curb his irritation, or at least keep it out of his voice. "Can I help you, Katrine?"

"I... I mean, the Lady is..."

It would be easier to interpret the stammering if the woman would just look at him when she spoke, instead of at the floor.

"Please, can you come with me? I don't know who else to ask."

Well, that clarified the matter. Clear as mud. Still, Katrine's distress seemed worse than her usual perpetual verge-of-panic attitude, so he began walking to the elevator that would take him to Une's office. Katrine ghosted along behind him, standing as far away from him as he confines of the elevator would permit. She looked at him from the corner of her eyes, and asked, "Have you seen the news?"

"Not since I arrived at the office this morning. Is there something I should know about?"

Her face fell, gaze redirecting to the floor, but she took a deep breath and clenched her fists. "It's Agent Maxwell. He... It looks like he jumped. From his balcony."

Maxwell? Jumped? His stomach churned. If this was all over the media, that didn't bode well... What had the idiot done now?

"I'm sorry."

The whispered condolence was a punch in the gut. It confirmed everything he didn't want to think about.

"I'm so sorry to have to tell you this way, but she's taking this really hard. She'd been so worried about him, and she's just sitting there staring at the screen, and I didn't know who else to ask for help."

Une had been worried about Maxwell? That was news to him. He'd been working very closely with Une, closer, he suspected, than anyone else in the organization. She'd come to him in the hotel room where he was under house arrest after Mariemaia had surrendered, and he'd been able to listen to her when he couldn't bear to hear the words of anyone else. Not his fellow pilots, who were almost sadistic in their insistence upon immediately forgiving him. Not any of the Earth Sphere authorities who treated him as though he might explode at any moment, doing more damage than the Libra. Not the psychiatrist who assured him over and over that it wasn't his fault.

He was an adult. He'd made the decision that the 'peace' that had been won by he and many, many others was a sham utterly without value. Instead of facing the hard questions about what he'd expected peace to look like and what he could do to help craft the new order into something worthy of the sacrifices paid for it, he'd chosen the easy route. He'd fallen back on the fighting skills that had become second nature to him. He'd retreated to the safety of following orders, finding comfort in Barton's oversimplified rhetoric instead of facing the ambiguities of the real world. In trying to become someone Meiran would approve of, he'd lost everything he had so painstakingly learned and became a cardboard cutout of a soldier.

He had, to borrow a phrase, royally screwed up.

He'd needed to face the justified anger of his fellow pilots. Honor demanded that he face them, listen to their words, accept whatever punishment they deemed necessary. A man faced the consequences of his choices. Winner and the psychiatrists seemed to be saying that there weren't even choices, that he had been a helpless pawn in the face of postwar trauma.

That was an insult to him, as a scholar, as a warrior, and as a man.

Above and beyond anyone else, the pilots had had the right to expect better of him. It seemed, though, that they hadn't. Each time they assured him what he had done was so easily overlooked and forgiven, his pride burned.

In the middle of his pain and anger, Une had come to him. Told him about the plans for a force to protect the peace. Told him she needed warriors. Needed him, specifically.

He'd scoffed.

He still remembered her answer. "Chang. More than people who know how to fight, I need people who know they can screw up. People who will question themselves, question me, and not be blindly certain that what they think is right is actually right. We're going to be the only real military force in the Earth Sphere. The potential for abuse terrifies me. I need someone with your absolute integrity – and honest awareness of his own fallibility."

He'd done his best to be that person for his Commander. For Une, who had also screwed up on a planetary scale, and who shamed him with her strength to continue on, knowing she might screw up again, striving to make recompense to the entire Earth Sphere for her error.

He strove to do the same. And to make recompense in a more personal fashion to those who had had a right to expect better from him. The debt was even larger now, as only the effort of the Gundam pilots had saved the world from the terrible consequences of Wufei's error.

It was possible that only Heero -- who himself had shot down a shuttle bearing the best hope for peace -- could have reached him that day. Heero's skill as a warrior demanded that Wufei listen to his words, and if this fighter who was his equal – perhaps more – could make such a colossal mistake, perhaps Wufei's own judgment could be in error.

Yes, he'd come to be aware of his own fallibility. More accurately, perhaps, come to accept it.

He had been at Une's right hand ever since, and he had not known she was concerned about Maxwell.

Though come to think of it, over the past few weeks, she had asked him questions concerning Maxwell. Questions concerning Maxwell's moniker of "Shinigami," about his interactions with the other pilots, and about his background before becoming a pilot.

But if she'd been concerned about Maxwell's condition, he would have expected her to say so forthrightly. She'd told him about Heero's demand to be kept up-to-date on the status of the other pilots, and had copied Wufei on the reports she sent to Heero concerning him. She had even shared her concerns about Barton's mental stability given his history of long-term deep cover assignments. She worried that Barton's chameleon-like ability to assume other personalities indicated a lack of a core self.

Wufei had found the concern to be valid, and had advocated cautiously opening a dialog with Winner on the topic.

But concerns about Maxwell were news to Wufei. So far as he'd known, Maxwell was, for all his infuriating personal style, performing excellently as an agent.

Katrine led him into her office, which was the gateway to Une's office. The blinds on her windows had been closed already, and the secretary locked the door behind her. She stood in front of her desk, hands twisting together nervously.

Wufei rapped on Une's door.

There was no reply.

"It's not locked," murmured Katrine. "At least it wasn't before. I closed it before I came to get you. I didn't want anyone else coming in while I was gone..."

"That was probably a good idea." The knob twisted easily in his hand. "I'll take it from here. Please don't allow any calls or visitors until I tell you otherwise."

Wufei let himself into his Commander's office, and closed the door behind him.

Trowa

Trowa sat cross-legged on the wall. Palm to palm, back straight, he drew breath in calm, fulfilling meditation. He was a tall man, chocolate brown hair, emerald eyes, quiet. He had two loves and both were kin, of sorts, tawny lions that paced in their cages, sharp teeth that rarely remembered the power to kill.

He had his own cage, but his mattered less to him. He could leave his cage when he wished. He was no one. No Name. The moment he wished to walk away from this life, he would. But he would not go without Quatre.

Quatre. Every moment was waiting to hear from him, waiting to see him, waiting to touch the sweater he had of Quatre's, waiting until Quatre was willing to disappear with him. He'd know when his lion was ready, even if he wasn't sure how he'd know.

Duo had once talked about joining the sweepers, going far out, living in the asteroid belt. There were a lot of resources out there.

In the meantime, he trained lions. He worked for Preventers like a good minion. He'd never imagined what peace felt like or would look like, but it wasn't this. He hadn't even conceived of this hole in his  
soul. If he had more of a self, it might have hurt more.

"Trowa," Catherine said softly, interrupting his ineffective meditation.

"Catherine," he acknowledged.

"There is something on the news. It's about Duo Maxwell."

"Did he blow something up?" Trowa asked, glad his back was turned and no one could see his smirk. He always knew Duo was going to be the first one to blow his mind over this separation crap. Duo was always more about family than even Quatre. Duo was a space gypsy and Trowa was secretly hoping Maxwell had blown up Preventer headquarters or something memorable. They could all go on the run. Get this fake peace and normalcy over with.

"In a manner of speaking," Catherine said gently. "He killed himself. There is footage on the vid of him falling backwards from his balcony. It almost looks like he's doing a trapeze stunt, until he hits. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go on."

"He's not dead," Trowa said firmly, the smile gone from his face.

"Trowa."

"He's not dead. Do you think I haven't thought about faking my death? He just beat me to it."

"That was a mean thing to say," Catherine said.

Trowa could hear the tears in her voice and he turned, lifting himself up so that he was squatting rather than sitting. If Quatre was a noble lion, Trowa was more like a sable dragon, lithe and deadly, heartless in many ways. "I'm sorry."

She smiled. "You better be. It would break my heart if I thought you were dead."

He stepped down from the wall he'd been sitting on, all graceful strength.

"Let's take a look at what Maxwell did to himself, shall we?" He offered his sister his arm and she wrapped her arm around his, hugging him close.

"Do you think there will be a big funeral? They'll let you go?"

"I don't know. Maybe they'll hush it up." Trowa wouldn't put it past the current government.

Three steps into the tent Trowa stopped, head tilted, and watched the blade go through Duo's braid, hacking, watched the thick brown rope fall. That. That hit Trowa and set his alarms screaming. It reassured him, too, though. If Duo were going to go under cover, he couldn't very well do it with three feet of hair swaying behind him.

Muscular arms stretched out to his sides. A breeze blew over his now short hair and whatever deep core self Trowa had doubled over in pain as Duo let himself fall backwards. It was as though he'd committed himself to whatever fate and then, falling, head first; he was like a rag doll.

Trowa couldn't feel his body. He could hear Catherine calling his name and it took all his control not to backhand her to get her to be quiet. This part of himself was as old a self as he had and it wasn't very mature. His true self had only made an effort to stay present in this waiting part of his life at all for fear of missing a communication from Quatre. That same deep self of his, that self wanted Duo. His friend.

Tears hot down his cheeks, he did not believe it. Duo didn't kill himself and if he did, he was manipulated into it.

Enough.

"I am going to Quatre."

"But you can't!"

"Yes, I can." Trowa turned on his heel and strode this his room, his computer. He needed to tell Une, and Quatre. Hell had just frozen over and Trowa wanted to go skating.

Duo

The moment his feet hit the floor, he was free!

His hair tangled against his face, short and light. On his knees, both hands went to his face, smearing sweat and tears back into chestnut brown silk.

Short.

Free.

No matter how it came out, if they caught him or if he died in some other way, he was free.

"We have to go," Cassia said, holding out her hand. "Damn impressive dive, Duo. You're one hell of a black swan. You hurt?"

He took her hand and rose, barefooted, torn jeans, bare-chested, "I'm better than I have been in a long time! Damn!"

Grinning, she touched the headset on one ear, "Yup, Pops, I found that book you wanted. You need anything else? I think it's gonna need a new cover though. Yeah, Pops, saw that on the vid. I'll be back to the ship in thirty." Another touch to the little black clip on her ear and she ended the call. "Okay, Pops' favorite book, into the bag. It's lined, just like we talked about and I got you a pillow and some water."

The bag in question was a golf club bag, very fancy, with nice clubs sticking out the top. It was not his favorite way to get out of the building, not at all. He sat down, legs stretched out and leaned all the way over. She reached to the top, triggered on the small oxygen supply and pulled mask out for him. "It's half an hour and we'll have you in the ship, were we hide all our contraband. Just take a nap, 'kay?"

Duo nodded, pulled the elastic around his head and held on to his feet as she zipped him up. They'd planned it carefully and the bag was lined. If he was chipped, which he was sure he was, the distance between the sign, where parts of his 'body' still clung and this apartment was too minimal for any tracker to sense, and well, no matter what they'd chipped him with, the amount of damage his 'body' had taken was enough to put the finish to it.

He closed his eyes and relaxed as much as he could as Cassia wheeled him out.

Heero. He'd be able to see Heero soon, able to talk to him, to smile at him, and Duo felt… happy, relieved. He hadn't felt that since, for so long he couldn't remember. He hadn't meant to take a nap, hadn't meant to fall asleep, but blackness was over him before he could realize that he was going out.


	5. Chapter 5

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults onlyWarnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive, http://www.gundam-wing-diaries(dot)comall others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

Chapter 5

Heero

To call the scene at Duo's apartment building a circus would be an insult to Catherine. Notably the circus had better crowd control than the L2 authorities seemed capable of maintaining. Nonetheless, it was inarguably a freak show. There seemed to be several large crowds of mourners, many in tears and a few actually wailing, all intent on covering every available surface with flowers. Other people seemed to be there purely to gawk, and seemed highly excited when Heero came into view. Whispers, pointing, and then of all things, someone came up to him as he was forcing his way through the crowd and asked for an autograph.

Fortunately, the autograph-seeking idiot had the sense to know death when it was glaring him in the face, and fled.

Heero could hear the in the distance the strident tones of a street preacher, who seemed to see in the situation a chance to berate large crowds of people for the many and varied sins of L2 -- for which Duo was somehow responsible. Or emblematic, at the least. If the bastard had been anywhere near him, Heero would have had some words with him about the appropriateness of using the scene of his closest friend's death to capture an audience for his ranting. Some words, and some cripplingly painful blows.

Breaking through the crowd, Preventer's badge held before him like a shield, Heero approached the scene of the... impact. He wouldn't call it death, not until he was certain.

He cursed under his breath. The scene was totally contaminated. A media crew was being pushed back by several uniformed Preventers. They'd definitely gotten close enough to contaminate the scene... the anchorwoman's highly polished shoe was marred with red smears. L2 cops, judging from the uniforms, were cuffing a man and removing test tubes from his pockets... some of which contained red substances. Heero didn't know if he should get perform violence upon the man for the attempted theft or be violently ill, but either way, violence was called for.

When his arm was touched, Heero found his hand around the throat of a woman in a Preventer's uniform before he had the chance to think about his response. Her hands wrapped around his wrist, yanking at it, and she struggled while choked-off noises spilling from her mouth.

He didn't want to let go. He wanted to hurt someone more than he ever had in his entire life, and this woman had touched him without his permission, and there were crowds of people here to stare at Duo's body, and this man trying to steal pieces of Duo's body, and there was blood splattered everywhere, a huge radius, and there was so much of it, the stink stabbing into his brain, and this woman should not have touched him...

Breathe in. Out, slowly. In again, from deep in the belly. Out. Slower. Better

He made his hand relax.

"Don't touch me."

The agent coughed, massaging her throat with her hands. Heero could see white marks where his fingers had pressed. There would be bruises. He couldn't bring himself to feel sorry.

"Agent Yuy?" She waited for his nod. "I'm Julia Parks, with the L2 branch. Agent Chang assigned me to be your liaison."

He nodded again. He wasn't pleased to meet her, and he wouldn't say he was.

"The body has been taken to the morgue already. Do you... do you want to go there, or..."

"His apartment. I want to see his apartment first."

Agent Parks escorted him inside, and had the sense not to try to talk to him. She stood back as he walked through Duo's tiny kitchen, the mismatched, thrift-shop living room, the blackout-curtained bedroom. As Une's notes had said, the apartment was now bare of personal effects except for several framed photos, all featuring one or more of the former Gundam pilots.

The kitchen counter was covered with evidence bags. He looked through them – empty prescription bottles, Duo's badge, a Preventer's standard-issue firearm, fiber samples, and a single piece of paper.

A note.

Heero read it.

**People**

**I fought for you.  
I bled for your freedom and safety.**

**You know what I wanted? In the war? I wanted to kinda belong.**

**I wanted everyone safe, free  
and for me.. I wanted  
I wanted to be a good person  
I wanted to be okay to be around  
I wanted my friends and my family**

**the other pilots  
they're my family  
but I'm a bad man  
and people are scared of me being with my family.**

**I can never be close to anyone or they'll die or I'll hurt them  
somehow.**

**I survived the church.  
I survived the war  
But I can't survive without my family**

**Heero is a good man. He'd never hurt you. Don't be afraid of him. He's  
kind and only wants to help people.**

**Quatre is a saint. Sweet and gentle.**

**Trowa is a quiet man who keeps to himself and only wants to live his  
life, you fucking assholes.. he's in love with Quatre. Being torn from  
the man he loves? That's his reward for helping save your sorry asses?**

**Wufei? Well, now he's an asshole, but he's not gonna start blowing  
things up. Mostly, I think he just liked telling me what an idiot I am.**

**So, please, as I can't stay here anymore, please be kind to my family.  
We only wanted to help you. We never wanted to bring you fear. Unless  
you're some corrupt politician who's hurting people, and even then..  
we're older, broken in body and soul. Please. For those I leave behind.  
Just leave them the hell alone, please?**

**Duo Maxwell  
Death. **

Heero watched his fingers as he shuffled the evidence bags, then covertly placed the note in his pocket. He felt as though he were a foot above his body, watching as it did the most surprising things entirely independent of his own volition. There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears.

"I'm done here," said his mouth to Agent Parks.

The ringing almost drowned out the sobbing coming from the apartment next to Duo's, where through an open door, he saw a woman being questioned by two Preventer agents. Almost.

The detachment lasted through the elevator ride down and exiting the building. As Agent Parks made for the cluster of official vehicles, he stopped and turned. Leaving his escort behind, he walked up to the media crew, now standing outside the newly-erected barrier. He faced the anchorwoman who was impeccably dressed, except for the dull red stains up on her patent-leather shoes, and handed her the note from his pocket. Duo's note.

"This is for you," he said.

Quatre

"Winner."

"Wufei. Lady Une. It's a pleasure to speak to you both again, though I wish the circumstances were other than what they are."

Lady Une, thought Quatre, looked worse than either he or Wufei. Her eyes were glassy, and he wondered if she'd taken tranquilizers. What did it say about them, all of them who'd fought in the war, that at a time like this not a one of them had shed a tear? All of them had just seen a brother of the soul fall to his death, even if they cherished a secret hope that it had been a fraud, yet none of them could cry. It felt like the ability to cry had been burned out of them, and the grief that twisted inside of them could only find exit through more corrosive methods.

Duo, Quatre suspected, would have had tears, had it been another one of them who had fallen. And he wouldn't have been wasting his time in these polite phrases. He'd have been on the line demanding, "What the fuck?," pushing for answers, pushing for action through the tears.

Well. Even if he couldn't find his tears, he could push. It was about damn time somebody pushed.

"Wufei. I'll need you to meet me on L2 as soon as you can. Heero is already en route, and I don't think it's a good idea for him to be left there alone. I'll be contacting Trowa, as well. I'll arrange for us to stay in one of WEI's properties there. Look for the details in an e-mail."

Thin lips twisted, a sure sign that Wufei was about to balk. Quatre had no patience just now for a 'Chang Wufei takes orders from no one' snit. No patience, and no inclination to coax and wheedle him into acting as part of a unit, part of a family.

Besides, Chang Wufei damn well took orders from Heero and Trowa. As well as Dekim Barton and his eight year-old puppet, damn it. It was about time he extended that courtesy to Quatre.

"Winner, I can't just --"

"Chang. Shut up."

Wufei looked flabbergasted. Even Lady Une blinked.

"Heero has asked us to gather. He suggested doing so here on L4, but I am not leaving him to face whatever he finds on L2 alone. He needs the rest of us around him if he has to face Duo's corpse. You know what Duo meant to him. You damn well owe it to him to be there." This felt good. Really good. He'd spent the last few months trying so desperately to fix his shattered family, softening his words to make them more palatable to the sisters whose love he didn't want to lose. To speak the blunt truths of his heart again, knowing that for all his moods and snits, Wufei wouldn't fail him -- it felt like finally being able to swing his arms after being trapped in a straitjacket for so long. "You owe it to Trowa and I not to leave us to support Heero alone, and you owe it to Duo to find out what happened, and to give him the grief and respect he deserves."

"I... am fully aware of what I owe Yuy. What I owe all of you, Maxwell not the least among my benefactors." Wufei bowed then, formally. "You are correct. I had realized myself that Heero will be unable to handle the situation well. And there is information of which all of you should be made aware."

Quatre raised an eyebrow.

"Let it wait until we are are together in a secure location, Winner. Please. It is too late to use it now, in any case."

"All right, Wufei."

"In all honesty, however, this is an incredibly difficult situation for the Preventers as well. Maxwell was a high-ranking agent, an exemplar, so to speak. There will need an internal investigation, and the invasive media coverage will require – deftness." Wufei's eyes slid to his traumatized boss, a silent indication that he thought she was incapable at the moment.

Frankly, Quatre agreed. Her silence thus far was unnerving. Une had always been able to make decisions and issue orders, no matter the situation before now. But...

"Wufei, I understand that. But I, at least, take the meaning of today's tragedy to indicate that perhaps we've all focused too much on the peace, and too little on taking care of each other." He sighed. "Lady, I'm sure you will want to come to L2 as well, to attend a memorial service if not to head up the investigation personally. While I cannot extend the invitation to stay at my property to you, we can be in communication to offer... mutual support. There has to be someone else besides the two of you who can be in charge of day to day operations."

"Commander?" inquired Wufei. Une nodded. "Very well, Winner. I'll see you on L2."

Quatre called in his assistant, and ordered him to make the arrangements for the trip.

"Very good, Mr. Winner."

"And if any of my sisters wish to talk to me, please tell them I'm handling personal business. I am unavailable until I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Mr. Winner."

It felt far too good to give that order. And now, finally, he could speak to the keeper of his heart. Would see him soon, no matter the circumstances.

The elation lasted until the call was picked up at Trowa's home.

"Hello, Catherine. Is Trowa available?"

"No." If daggers could have been transmitted via vidphone, Quatre would have been bleeding.

"I see." His headache was edging it's way back into a level of pain that couldn't be ignored. "Is there another number at which I can get hold of him?"

"No. There's not. I don't know where he is right now."

Quatre reminded himself that he could not call Trowa's only sister a liar to her face. "It's very urgent that I speak to him."

"Are you planning to drag him back into the middle of trouble again? Is he going to get shot at again?"

"I really am sorry to trouble you again -- " He hurried to cut her off before she called him a liar to his face, "But you may have seen the news about Duo Maxwell?"

Her expression went from stormy to ice cold rage. "Yes. So has he. If he hasn't called you yet, can't you draw your own conclusions?" She ended the call.

Quatre spent a long time with his face in the roses before he was able to make himself get up and pack for his trip.

Trowa

Trowa's bag sat at his feet, fingers lingering over the keyboard. He'd tried calling Quatre's private number and it had rang straight to voice mail. The phone was off or something. He wasn't sure why Quatre hadn't tried to call him.

Part of him wanted to go to L4 and kick the door down.

He knew Quatre had to find his own way, his own path, his own way to whatever truth would free his heart. If being what his family wanted him to be was what Quatre needed to do, Trowa would respect that.

Part of him wanted to hunt Duo down and beat his ass for pulling this stunt before Trowa could do it himself. He would not believe Duo Maxwell was dead until he saw the body, saw genetic tests on the remains that prove it to be Maxwell's sorry ass. And then… if that were the case, he was going to go looking for the murderer.

And still he stood in front of the vidphone, waiting. Quatre would call. Or his phone would answer, or maybe, Trowa thought, he'd just call the main line. That annoying assistant of Quatre's would put him through to Quatre.

Trowa typed the number before he could back out and sure enough Trowa's assistant answered. Surprise. "Mr. Barton."

"I'd like to speak with Quatre, please."

A twitch of an eyebrow read, 'I bet you would.'

"Master Quatre is not taking calls at this time."

"A mutual friend may be dead. I'd like you to check and see if Quatre will take my call."

"If said friend is the one that impacted the pavement on L2, I think the odds are very good that a mutual aquaintance has terminated his own life. I'm sure he was aware of the consequences of taking a walk off his balcony. At least he knew his limits. My Master specifically said that he would be taking personal time just now. Perhaps you have a balcony near by?"

A hundred percent, Trowa wanted to beat him to a pulp, but no expression showed on his face. "Tell him I am going to L2. You don't want to ever see me face-to-face," Trowa said and then ended the call. If Quatre did not arrive on L2 shortly, Trowa would go looking for him.

"Triton? Where are you going," Catherine said, letting the tent flap drop behind her. "Must you go right now? We can all go together in two days."

He picked his bag and looked over his shoulder. "Thank you for everything, Catherine. I just need to face this in my own way."

"You're my brother! My family!" Her fists balled at her sides.

"Duo is my friend. Heero is my friend, Wufei if he wants my support. Quatre is my lover, even if he doesn't take my calls."

"See? How can he love you if he wouldn't even take your calls at a time like this!?" She knew it was a lie, knew she should tell him that Quatre had called, but all she could feel was her soul being torn away as her only remaining family left her again. Left her again for him. "Don't go, please."

"I have to go," Trowa said. As much as he respected Quatre's right to his own path, he respected his own right to his path as well. "Good bye, Catherine."

He was on a shuttle when the suicide note was released by the media. He saw it on the screens in the terminal as he disembarked, and his heart was as numb as it always was when Quatre was away from him.


	6. Chapter 6

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive, http://www.gundam-wing-diaries. all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 6

Quatre

The shuttle was in the middle of docking, and Quatre was about to start screaming. He wasn't certain he'd be able to stop if he did, though. Too many painful things, and his head was throbbing... Beginning with watching Duo fall, hearing the talking heads speculate on why he did it and what it meant...

Then the e-mail to Trowa, agonizing but necessary. Duo's death would hurt Trowa immensely, as the braided pilot was the only other person to nurture the fragile self that had been buried beneath the trauma and harsh necessities of Trowa's life. Quatre would do anything to ease Trowa's hurt, anything at all, and it was important to ensure Trowa knew that.

Trowa -

I know that I took you for granted and left you alone too long. I don't deserve your forgiveness, and I won't presume to ask for it. But I do cherish you, though I doubt you can believe it, and if ever there is anything you desire that I can help you achieve, please ask. Anything. I would break every law of Allah and man to give you peace. I won't push you for anything more than you are willing to give me. I know you will need to look into Duo's death. Please let me help you. I won't impose my feelings on you. Just let me help.

All of my love,

Quatre

After he'd hit send, he wished he that he had something in his stomach so he could properly be sick. Dry heaving was miserable.

Next, he was surprised at boarding to see his executive assistant standing there with a duffel. Convincing the man he didn't have to join Quatre had been difficult. There really wasn't a polite or refined way to say that he would be depending on the local L2 staff to handle matters, because only a native had the expertise to navigate the complex system of bribes necessary to get anything at all done. In the end, he had to give up on tact and issue an outright order.

He hadn't been able to convince Amihan and Aisha that they didn't need to join him, and orders were not an option.

Aisha, he suspected, was honestly there to support him. She seemed sincere when she said that Family did not allow Family to face this kind of tragedy alone. Aisha was quick and clever, devastatingly sarcastic, and while she had been initially wary of him, she did seem to be warming.

Amihan, though...

Immediately post launch Amihan had insisted that both she and Aisha would wear the hajib, the traditional head wrapping, while on L2. Neither habitually wore it on L4 or while traveling on Earth, but Amihan had begun talking about "the kind of people" that lived on L2 and had gotten progressively more insulting. She never crossed the line of speaking ill of the dead, but the implications about Duo, as an L2 native... Aisha had given him a thoughtful look when she'd caught him grinding his teeth, and changed the topic.

Finally, they disembarked, and Quatre insisted on going through the proper customs and immigration lines. It was clear that he could bribe his way out of all of it, and in other places, he might have taken advantage of the streamlining the Winner name could invoke. But here, he felt it was a good thing to set an example and play by the rules. Even if it meant his head would literally explode, splattering all over the cheap linoleum.

So he was sweating and rumpled, carrying most of his sisters' bags, and at the end of his rope when he walked through the sliding doors into the shuttle port lobby – and into a miracle.

Trowa. It was Trowa. Here, on L2, and waiting for him. Had he received Quatre's e-mail and forgiven him? Or had he simply known Quatre would come here, and not seen any need for talking or making plans?

His body dropped the bags and was running forward without any input at all from his head. Trowa was here. Trowa had gotten even taller in the last year! He leaped leapt for his lover, throwing himself forward and up.

A sudden, heart-seizing moment of fear – Was Trowa willing to be touched, here and now? He could be skittish in crowds. And he might be unwilling to embrace Quatre immediately after so long a parting. But Quatre's heart had outpaced his head, and he'd made his leap, and the forward momentum could not be stopped.

And Trowa caught him, as Trowa always had.

Quatre's doubts led to a moment of hesitation before he wrapped arms and legs around the man who was the axis of his soul. He reached for the kiss, desperate, eyes closed to block out anything in the world that might not be Trowa. There was only Trowa's body, taller, more muscled than before, Trowa's taste, Trowa's arm under his ass, supporting him. Quatre wished more than anything that he could impale himself on Trowa here and now, so every possible inch of skin would be touching, inside and out.

Duo

"What the hell do you have to be depressive about? What's so bad that you can't talk to your friends?" Rachel asked, leaning against the door to Duo's room. She was an older mechanic, short white hair that stood right up on end. She'd helped build the first Deathscythe and been a friend for a long time. "Why do you think you need pills, Duo-boy?"

"I don't know, Ray," Duo said, rolling a shoulder. "Man, I think I pulled a muscle in that dive. And Une ordered me to see that doctor. It wasn't my idea. She threatened my friends. What do you think? I had to do what I needed to do to protect them."

"You're cute with short hair, boy. Look, you're here now. I'm glad. What color you gonna do your hair?"

"Don't care. It hardly feels like my hair anymore. It's too light. I feel like I'm going to float away!"

"I could get you some servos to carry around?"

"Naw, thanks," Duo said, running a hand through his short hair. "I gotta get used to it. What do you think of my new name?"

"Ian? It's nice, I guess. I voted for David, but no one listens to me."

"You voted?"

"Yeah, we ran a poll. Ian's a good name, Duo."

"I guess. Maybe I'll like it when Heero says it. God, he's gonna kick my ass. I wonder why he hasn't replied to me yet."

"What'd you say to him?"

"Asked him if he was bringing cake. He did say he was coming to get me."

"Goof. He's probably not taking you seriously now. Oh, and we found him. He's been on L2 for about an hour now, counting the time we've been talking." She tossed Duo a small tracking device. "Get your hair done first or it's all for nothing. Don't be stupid out there, ok? You shouldn't go at all. I'll go get him, if you want?"

"No, I want to. And it's only gonna take me a few minutes to get my hair done. Macky is gonna do it."

"God save you then," Rachel said, smirking. "It kind of feels like you've been gone for the longest time, you know? As if even though we knew where you were, you just, well, weren't you."

"Yeah," Duo picked up the black leather jacket he'd been given and smiled, as small, vulnerable smile. "I totally understand. I've missed myself. Thanks for the hacking! Preventer tech, best there is," he  
said, slightly mocking.

Ten minutes later he lay with his head back as Macky massaged his scalp. Eyes closed, goosebumps over his shoulders. He was pretty sure he hadn't known there were nerves like that on his scalp. "That feels so good. I'm gonna get you to cut my hair all the time!"

"Sure you are," she said, massaging her fingers back through his hair, "All the boys say that. What color are we doing?"

"Don't care. Just different. Something that doesn't look like me. "

"Okay, sure thing," she said.

Heero. He could just lay there and daydream about Heero. They'd never really had a chance, not even to be friends. The war just got in the way. Hell. he could move back to L1 with Heero and go to school now. Get a job doing something… anything, but something interesting. Maybe he could get Heero to rub his scalp like that, in the shower, and he could touch Heero's, and then he was really dreaming and Heero was kissing his neck, telling him he was the most beautiful person in known space.

"Okay, sleeping beauty! All done! Dry even. Ready?"

Duo yawned, rubbing his eyes, and so as she sat him up and turned him around, he only had one eye open, and it just fell out of his head, followed by his heart. He sat there, both eyes wide as saucers,  
scratching the very naked back of his neck. "Holy shit."

"You said something no one would expect."

"I meant red. Or maybe blond."

"You shoulda said. It'll take a couple hours to bleach it out and start over. Your hair is going to be straw."

"Straw?" Duo shuddered, literally, a thousand dancing banshees tingling across his shoulders as he sat there and took in the blue of his new hair. "My hair looks like cotton candy."

Macky grinned, "Yup. No one will recognize you!"

"Later. I gotta go find Heero. I just have this feeling. I need to find him."

Trowa

Trowa's moments all blended together in gray and shades of black. A bright spot had been selecting a cup of tea for Quatre, knowing that Quatre would be coming off the shuttle and he'd see him. Oolong. Quatre had always liked oolong.

The closer the ETA got, the brighter the world seemed.

Quatre.

Blond angel. Blue eyes.

Trowa found himself smiling. Life had its value, it did, but such flat champagne it was without Quatre.

He brushed at his hair, wishing he were somehow something more attractive than a leftover assassin and merc, or a former clown. He imagined himself as a dignitary, ready to pick Quatre up in a very nice car. Of course, the motorcycle he'd gotten wasn't bad. With Quatre's arms around his waist, he'd be king of the world, not just some dignitary.

Then Quatre was there, coming forward with too many bags and too many wrinkles in his suit, and he was the most beautiful vision Trowa had ever seen. Without a word, Trowa was moving forward, reaching for the bags, wanting to trade for the tea, which he hoped was still Quatre's favorite.

Quatre's head was turned away, as he spoke to the women walking behind him. When he turned to face Trowa, his face transformed. Flushed cheeks replaced the pallor, and the worry lines between his brows disappeared. The bags fell flat to the ground, and he launched himself forward at Trowa with open arms.

Trowa caught Quatre, careful not to spill the tea. There was a moment of hesitation, and then Quatre was clinging to him in a full-body embrace. Quatre still loved him!

He'd been so afraid that Quatre might not want him when he finally saw him. "My love!" Trowa whispered, holding the shorter man close, lifting him off the ground as he spun slowly around. "My love, I have longed for you as the morning twilight longs for the dawn," Trowa whispered the words in Quatre's ear.

Trowa turned to seek Quatre's lips, to offer him a kiss... time seemed so fleeting, so fragile and Duo's desperate stunt made it seem like there was so little time. He didn't care who watched, who didn't approve, he had this moment with his Quatre, and he might never have another.

"Quatre! What are you doing! This is revolting, to forget yourself in a public place. You are embarrassing the family, and darkening Father's name!"

In counterpoint to the hissed fury of one of the women behind Quatre, the brilliant flashes announced the presence of paparazzi.

Trowa did not release his hold on Quatre by so much as the width of a hair. "Be silent! You who wear a hijab, who follow the path of the Prophet. Know your place. Quatre could not darken his father's name or honor by so much as you and your mouth and hateful thoughts might. He is master here. Not you. Be silent about things which you do not understand!"

Trowa had been waiting to say that for a long time. After the hints he'd gotten from his rare conversations with his love, he'd researched Quatre's religion and prepared. He had a very good idea which sister this was and exactly how much pain she'd inflicted on his love with the bludgeons of faith and familial duty. No more. He would see to it that she would not hurt him any more. He could be whoever this woman thought she wanted to see. He could be an Oz agent. He could be a missionary in Africa. He could be a demanding male follower of Islam. He could be a kind and gentle follow of Islam. He could be a shadow and steal the golden chalice away. He had the Holy Grail right here in his arms and he'd do anything to keep it.

"Quatre, want to go for a motorcycle ride?"

Quatre hadn't pulled away at his sister's voice or the flashbulbs. When Trowa lifted his head to answer, he buried his face in Trowa's neck a moment and took a deep breath.

"Things which I do not understand?" The woman's voice rose to a shriek. "Who are you to say such things! You have no authority--"

Quatre lifted his head. "He is my beloved, Amihan. You don't have to like it, but that doesn't change the facts."

The other woman spoke up. "Then he is your guest, brother?"

Quatre nodded. "Yes. Trowa is my guest and my beloved. Trowa, meet two of my sisters, Aisha and Amihan. They came to... support me."

The second woman inclined her head slightly to him when Quatre introduced her as Aisha. "Then we owe him hospitality, as the guest of our family, Amihan. No matter what we might think of him. And this is not a place to air family disagreements!" Aisha gave Trowa an assessing glance. "Nor is it a place to air... reunions. Can you respect my family's wish not to make a spectacle, Honored Guest?"

Still holding Quatre, Trowa bowed deeply and with great flourish to Amihan and then, more politely, inclined his head to Aisha in return. "Most splendid lady, I am deeply honored to be a guest of your family and will always strive to bring honor to the Winner name. Love is the most honorable of all the emotions and Quatre is a lucky man to have such caring and courageous sisters to accompany him in his time of grief. Let us get off the streets and to some place more restful?"

The cameras loved the sweeping bow, applauding with a torrent of clicks and flashes.

Aisha frowned. "Frankly, I'd been hoping for less spectacle rather than more. No matter how noble your feelings are --" Amihan opened her mouth, and Trowa noticed that Aisha's hand, wrapped in sisterly love around Amihan's elbow, dug sharp nails into the tender skin. Amihan squeaked.

"--No matter the nobility, the marketplace -- or the shuttle port -- is hardly the place to display them. A more restful place sounds better."

He really wanted to tell Quatre's sisters it was better for the press to talk about love than uglier things like abandonment or betrayal. But if they didn't agree with him that he and Quatre's love was a worthy, beautiful thing, he knew he would never forgive them.

Quatre spoke softly to Trowa. "This feeding frenzy is odd. While I may be a high-profile individual on L4, WEI doesn't have that much presence here. Even at home, I haven't been a target of the paparazzi like this since the furor about the Winner heir piloting a Gundam died down." He sighed, and Trowa could feel a strange tremor in the limbs wrapped around his torso a moment before he unwrapped himself and stood on his own. "At least they're staying back and not shouting out questions. I know those laws don't get enforced terribly well here."

He included his sisters in his next comment. "Give me a moment to handle this, please."

Quatre turned, and looked extremely relieved to see a figure in the capped uniform of a limousine driver sporting a WEI logo on the sleeve pushing his way through the crowd. The chauffeur was accompanied by two dark-suited large men that looked like bodyguards. Quatre gestured for them to come closer.

Trowa held tight to Quatre. He wouldn't let go for a small army of Preventers. Only Quatre's command or some threat to Quatre's life might get him to let go. He wasn't sure he'd ever let go again. For all Quatre's poise, his lover looked terrible, exhausted and ill. Quatre needed to buy time to gather his composure. Trowa could help with that. With a flourish, he presented the tea -- which he had managed not to spill – to his lover. The answering smile brought color back to the shuttleport, and Quatre gratefully sipped at it for a few moments.

"Excuse me." Quatre addressed the paparazzi, in his usual firm but polite tones. "If I can have your attention for a moment? I'll have a statement for you later, but please -- it's been a long and difficult day. It's been a long time since I've been able to see the man I love. Please give us a little space. And please, don't badger my sisters. They aren't responsible for what I do."

The media swarm began to break up, encouraged by the port police.

"Ladies, forgive me, please. My heart has too long been in the shadow, waiting for this moment and it is as if I am just now able to breath. Let us find that more restful place. Quatre, I have a motorcycle. Ride with me?"

Still nestled against his side, he could feel Quatre tense, and give a long look at his sisters.

Then he felt Quatre twitch, and the arms around Trowa's shoulders shifted enough that Quatre could begin a quick massage of the knotted tendons. Quatre hissed in dismay at the tension beneath his fingers, and muttered under his breath. "No. Surely they can manage with a chauffeur and two bodyguards, even on L2. They're grown women, and I didn't ask them to come."

Then, louder: "Aisha, Amihan, I'll see you later."

Aisha maintained her grip on Amihan's arm, long nails poised above the nerve cluster. She nodded as Quatre made his announcement, and then spoke to Trowa. "Mister Barton, I am entrusting you with my brother. Do not disappoint the Winner family. I'm sure we'll all have a lot to talk about once we've all reached the suites. Right, Amihan, Mister Barton?"

"I will protect Mr. Winner with my life," Trowa said, giving a small polite bow. "When you are ready to talk, I shall be at your service, Lady."

She turned and began issuing instructions to the chauffeur, and Trowa hastened away, hand in hand with his Holy Grail. He really didn't think he was ever going to give Quatre back.

Heero

Agent Parks made an attempt to talk to him on the drive to the morgue. "Agent Maxwell... you were close to him?"

He just stared at her.

She didn't say anything else to him during the ride. Tinnitus drowned out whatever she said to the morgue attendant, and he followed them down the hall. The attendant gestured to a drawer, and then the two of them stepped back out of the room. Maybe they would wait in the hallway, though from the nervous sidelong glances, it was possible they were simply going to flee.

Heero stood in front of the wall of drawers, his posture sufficiently rigid to please even J, fists clenched.

There was screaming inside his head, screaming from some part of him that he'd kept successfully bound and gagged for years... probably ever since he'd been shot on a dock by a boy with the most remarkable braid.

He didn't know if he could do this.

There was a pulse of heat through his blood, and another, and another. The scent of antiseptic cleaners stabbed at his nose, but couldn't hide the iron tang of blood or the worse scents of feces and flesh just beginning to rot. He could hear the heavy, fear-laden breathing from out in the hallway.

He yanked open the drawer, felt the handle warping beneath the force of his grip.

Then Heero stared.

It was just a jumble of pieces, red and white and pink. It was the scent that told him it was the shattered remains of a body long before his eyes made sense of it. Beneath the scent blood was the scent of Duo, unmistakable, but somehow... somehow off.

At the top of the drawer was another evidence bag, filled with a coil of unraveling braid. Duo's hair...

Heero clutched the bag to his chest, hands shaking as he ripped the plastic open. Hair spilled over his hands, soft and silky, and smelling of Duo, that unmistakable mix of Duo's own scent and the lingering traces of gunpowder and lavender shampoo. There was also the faintest hint of fear-laden sweat – even Duo, fearless and wild Duo, couldn't face that plunge with calm.

This was Duo's braid. So... this ruin of a human body had to be...

The shock of impact as Heero fell to his knees jarred the cry from his throat. It was a wordless howl, loss and guilt and grief pouring from his throat, filling the morgue, so loud it felt as though it could fill the entire colony, and spill into space.

It only stopped when Heero had to gasp for breath. He wasn't aware of the trails of tears down his face, and he wasn't aware of the morgue attendant peering around the doorframe. And when the flash of the camera broke into the oblivion of his grief, something cracked inside of Heero, and he bolted, running out the door, running down the hall, running without a destination as the agonizing pulse of heat poured through his body.

And when he stopped, with no idea of where he was only knowing that he was at last alone, it did not seem strange to him that he still cradled Duo's braid to his chest in hands that now ended in viciously sharp claws.


	7. Chapter 7

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive: , http://www.gundam-wing-diaries. all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

[xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 7

Wufei

The note was released by the media before Wufei and Commander Une even boarded the shuttle.

"This paper, hand delivered to Freedom Media by Preventer Agent Heero Yuy, appears to be a suicide note from Preventer Agent Duo Maxwell, who plunged to his death only a few short hours ago. Both young men served as pilots for the infamous Gundam mobile suits during the war. Freedom Media is the first to bring you this breaking news!"

The image of the anchorwoman was replaced by a piece of paper bearing Maxwell's strangely neat print. Incongruously, Wufei thought the breaks in the lines made the note appear like a poem.

**People**...

The words were simple and direct. No elaborate imagery, no artful references. Just the desperate loneliness of a war-broken man. Of his war-broken friend.

His eyes stung. Une put a hand on his shoulder.

It was a tiny, fragile dam against the flood of loneliness that answered the note. He'd tried so hard to pretend it wasn't there, he'd almost convinced himself.

He couldn't be angry at being called an asshole. Not in the face of Maxwell's certainty that he wouldn't blow up anything again, even after his role in the Eve War.

And anyway... he was an asshole. Especially to Maxwell.

Both Winner and Maxwell made him uncomfortable. They weren't what he expected warriors to be. They weren't what Meiran expected warriors to be. She wouldn't have liked them, he suspected, and if he was to be her replacement...

Well. Winner was courteous, a scholar of sorts, if not really a warrior, and an expert at defusing tense situations.

Maxwell, on the other hand, was an expert at blowing things up. Wufei's self-control was one of the most frequent targets of Duo's gift for demolitions. Duo had learned quickly how to push his buttons, and in time, he hadn't even waited for Duo pushes to unleash the worst side of his character.

After Meiran, after his defeat at Trieze's hands – he'd just needed someone to look down on so badly...

In the middle of the shuttle port, sitting next to his Commander with her comforting hand on his shoulder, in full Preventer regalia, Chang Wufei cried.

Duo

Duo had expected to find Heero in a hotel, or maybe Preventers HQ. He was still amazed Heero was on L2 at all. His plan to reconnect with Heero after he faked his death was hazy – maybe move into an apartment next to his and introduce himself one day. Heero might not even recognize him without the braid, with a new name.

They'd picked up Heero's tracking signal, and scrambled it. Duo was probably the only person on L2 who could find Heero. But the last place Duo had expected to find Heero Yuy was an abandoned ventilation repair duct. Duo wasn't sure this was Heero, no matter what the tracking device and most of his senses told him. Heero, kneeling, curled into himself clutching a mass of brown hair; Heero with a sable tail, soft little pointed ears...

"Heero?"

The harsh rasps of Heero's breathing echoed down the shaft, a hollow metallic sound. He didn't lift his face from where it was buried in the braid, but those furry little ears – dark brown, edges darkening to black, peeping up from the hair that was even more disarrayed than usual – twisted around to point at him.

Duo stood there in the doorway, his tracker slowly falling to his side. Heero, it couldn't be Heero on his knees holding the braid he'd cut off. That had to have come from the morgue. "Heero, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"

Heero's breathing sped up, and the fists clenched tight around the braid, and pressed it harder against his face, hiding his eyes. The tail -- the long, fluffy tail, the same color as Heero's hair, though it too darkened to sable at the tip – tucked in even tighter against the curve of Heero's ass, where it wound around his thigh.

"Don't tease me. You're dead. You're not allowed to tease me anymore. Yell at me if you want to, but don't tease."

"Heero," Duo said, cautiously moving closer. "Man, I didn't think you'd be this broke up. Is that my braid?"

Duo was not dealing at all with the tail and ears. It just didn't seem real. Only slightly less real than Heero crying over him though. Duo moved into a squat next to Heero and reached out to touch his braid. "Damn. I'm gonna miss that thing. Heero. I didn't die. I faked it."

Heero froze, and then slowly, carefully, without ever turning to face Duo, one clawed hand reached out to wrap gently around Duo's ankle.

"Baka." Heero's voice was low and scratchy. The hand around Duo's ankle tightened into an unbreakable grip. And only then did Heero lift his face and look at Duo, and his expression was full of confusion, lips set in a determinedly neutral line, brows lowered in a scowl over eyes that still looked lost and abandoned.. "You... faked it? But it was you. I saw. Smelled."

"What good would it do if it wasn't realistic? Damn, Heero, don't break my ankle."

"Hn. Realistic." Heero shuddered, the motion traveling down his entire body, as though he was trying to shake something off. "Realistic."

His grip on Duo's ankle eased slightly, though he gave no sign that he was going to let go anytime soon. The lines of his face eased into a more familiar expression.

"What the hell's going on with your ears and, Dude, do you have a tail? I'm sorry. I didn't think this would get to you this much. Man, Heero...?" Duo didn't want to ask 'What's wrong with you?'-- he was maybe the sole cause of this distress and he wanted to fix it, not make it worse.

At the word "tail," Heero looked down to where the appendage curled over his thigh. He blinked, and his other hand let the braid fall into his lap in favor of running his claws through the fur. The tail unwound and swung around behind his back. He then reached up to gingerly touch an ear.

"Oh." It was the mild surprise of a man who takes a sip of his coffee only to realize he's added more sugar than he'd meant.

"Yeah. Oh. So, you are the real Heero Yuy," Duo asked, light, playful, and yet really wanting to see the response. "I don't even know if you like me or not, but after you sent me that message, I realized how miserable I was, how it was getting worse. I was going to come find you and maybe see if we could start over. You know, if maybe I wasn't such a loser?"

Heero arched a brow at the 'real Heero Yuy,' as if wondering who else he might possibly be, or perhaps who would have the balls to impersonate him. As Duo finished speaking, however, the almost playful gesture disappeared. He gave Duo a long, hard look – a Heero Yuy mission look – and scowled. "I thought you didn't lie."

"I don't lie. What did I just say that you think was a lie? I was really going to come find you and see if we could start over. I love the sound of your voice, Heero. God, I can't even say how much I've missed you," Duo said, smiling, his eyes trying to find a way to study the ears on Heero's head that was more subtle than out-and-out staring.

The ears that were pointed straight at him, part of the laser-focus of Heero's attention. Heero finally let go of Duo's ankle, only to run the hand up Duo's leg, up his side, to cup the pointed chin. He stared directly into the violet eyes, nostrils flaring as he caught Duo's scent.

"You realized how miserable you were. After I sent that message, you realized it."

"Yeah. I just wanted to see you so badly and everyone was telling me that I was bad for you and that I'd hurt you if I saw you and," Duo paused, biting his lower lips softly. "I just couldn't live like that. It was either fake it or do it and I figured if I faked it, I could see my friends again. Forgive me? I'm sorry I'm a dumb shit."

Claws bit into Duo's cheeks, as the hand that held Duo's chin twitched, and then dropped away entirely. "Forgive you for what? Faking your death?" Heero bent his head, eyes hiding behind his bangs. "Stand up."

"Okay," Duo said, standing up, taking a step back. "I'm not sorry for faking my death. I guess I'm sorry that I'm a pain in the ass and I'm just... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you." Duo's stomach shrank as tears slipped down his face, stinging over the scratches on his cheek. "Please be okay, Heero. You're a good person."

Heero stood as well, matching Duo's step to the inch, not allowing Duo to retreat from him. "You're sorry you hurt me."A clawed hand seized the back of Duo's head, palm at the nape of Duo's neck, fingers twining in the shortened hair. "Me." A sharp tug forced Duo's head forward, to rest against Heero's chest. Heero turned his head, rubbing his cheek along silky strands. "My baka."

"Wha'da'ya mean your baka? Heero, we gotta talk. You have claws? Is this something new or have you always been able to have claws?" For a moment he just stood there as he talked, letting Heero hold him, afraid to touch Heero back, then he gave in to his instinct and wrapped his arms around Heero's waist.

If Heero wanted to kill him, he was going to do it anyway and Duo figured he might as well do what he wanted beforehand. "So? You happy to see me?"

"Yes. I am happy to see you." Heero's other arm wrapped around Duo's shoulders, began to slowly stroke Duo's back, using the pads of his fingers. "I have had these claws before. Not often, and it was a long time ago. J gave me a medication to suppress them, along with other things that might interfere with my mission. They will probably go away in time. They have before."

The slow strokes on Duo's back stopped as Heero's hand settled between his shoulder blades. The other hand pulled at Duo's hair, tilting the tear-streaked face up to him.

"They aren't my concern right now."

Now this was his Heero, and life felt a little more normal. Heero sounded like Heero, smelled like Heero and he had been gently rubbing Duo's back. It was almost like Duo'd really fallen off his balcony and gone to the only heaven he could imagine.

"Oh god, Heero? I'm happy to see you too! I missed you so much!" Heero's hand in his hair made goosebumps dance across his shoulders. "What are your concerns right now?" Duo looked up at Heero, feeling utterly vulnerable and open.

"You have been depressed. You are taking medication. You have been engaging in self-injurious behavior. You were hospitalized." All of this in a flat tone, as though he were listing off items on a menu. Then his eyes narrowed, his expression as furious as Duo had ever seen it, and the hand in Duo's hair tugged sharply. "You did not tell me any of this."

New tears filled Duo's eyes. "I didn't feel depressed when she made me start. She threatened Trowa's citizen status and said they'd try you as a terrorist and she said it was just talking, but he wanted me to take these drugs and it just made every thing look crazy. Heero, so I carve a little? I did that in the war and no one even noticed! That doctor was just looking for ways to get me in trouble with Une. They said I'd hurt you if I were near you and look what I did! Heero! I'm sorry!"

Duo was nestled into Heero's chest again, as Heero rubbed the line of his jaw over Duo's face and hair, seemingly marking Duo with his scent. He waited until Duo's distress subsided a little, and then again pulled Duo's head back to meet his eyes. "Listen to me. All the hurt – yours, mine, Quatre's, the others – is because you were not near me. None of you were near me. I could not ascertain your status and did not know you required assistance. I failed you."

He scooped up Duo's braid, hung it around Duo's neck. "You are alive. But do not try to tell me that the loss of this was not a partial death." Blue eyes blazed with intensity, mission-type intensity. "I failed you. I will do better now. You have been damaged by solitude, Une, this Cromwell person and his drugs. You are not currently capable of protecting yourself. I will monitor you closely until you are well, and I will not forget again how deeply you need Pack."

Claws bit into Duo's scalp and tore his shirt between his shoulder blades, painful, but not deep enough to draw blood. "But if you ever again fail to appraise me of your status when you are doing so poorly, you will not like the consequences. If you do not want me to restrain you for your own safety right now, you will inform me of the slightest problem with your mental or physical health. You will inform me of any need to injure yourself before you do so. Give me your word. I know Duo Maxwell will not lie."

"Controlling bastard," Duo said, but his voice and smile were full of affection and acceptance. "Heero, you have never been able to just talk like a normal person, but you say the sweetest things. My need for Pack, uh? And I can too protect myself. I got myself out of there, didn't I? And you're here. By the way, you were tagged with a homing chip. We scrambled it, except for letting me track you by it to here. The scrambling won't last forever. We're masking it by the surge of data flowing through the system right now. If you want to stay in good with the Preventers, you'll want to keep that chip. If you want to get rid of it though, I got some friends who can help you out with that."

He shivered in Heero's arms. "I like you touching me, I do. I will advise you if I'm feeling any serious need to do myself permanent bodily harm, okay?"

Heero gave Duo a little shake. "I understand your need to downplay your recent emotional difficulties. You have never been comfortable admitting vulnerability, especially to me, and you are probably confused and unsettled by my current behavior." He scowled, pausing for a moment. "I am having difficulty finding words sufficient to the task. I do not know slang, nor was I taught the vocabulary of interpersonal relationships."

He thought for a moment. "I require you to inform me, for at least the duration of this mission, if you are feeling any need whatsoever to do yourself any harm at all. Or if you are otherwise distressed. We are both enjoying our current proximity. If you continue to dance around the issue without giving me your word, I will have to resort to communication techniques that will likely displease you. I calculate it would be some time before we could enjoy this proximity again. Do you understand me, Duo?"

Duo took a moment to translate that: _Duo, I just saw you plunge off a 30__th__ story balcony and smelled your corpse. For all that I am playing it cool, this disturbed me enough that I ran away with critical evidence from the scene, and grew claws, a fluffy tail, and pointy ears. It is going to be a while before I unwind and am able to believe you are sane. Keep pushing me, and I'll have to restrain you, which will make it difficult to cuddle. It will also piss you off, making cuddling difficult for the forseeable future.._

Right.

"Okay," Duo said, more concerned for Heero than for himself. "I like this proximity and I'm sorry for upsetting you, Heero. Really am. I'll tell you every little detail and you can stay as close to me as you like. The first time you tell me to shut up though, I will. Understand? "

A curt nod was offered in reply.

"These changes," Duo asked, reaching carefully to touch one of Heero's little pointy ears, "Are you in pain? Are you hurt, injured physically?"

Duo's other hand went around Heero's waist, holding him gently, rubbing, welcoming him, maybe letting him know that Duo liked this proximity and didn't want it to go away.

Beneath Duo's hands, rigid tension began to ease out of Heero's spine. He did not protest as Duo touched one of his ears, though the ear twitched at the first brush of contact as though it were ticklish.

"I am uninjured. This state is not painful. My senses are enhanced, however, and until I grow used to processing the information, it will be distracting." A flash of sharp canine tooth was visible as Heero bit his lip, and then continued. "I do appear to have some psychological ... alterations. It is better now that you are here, and I can smell my scent upon you."

Heero sighed, as though he were exhaling months of pent-up unhappiness. "I understand why J felt it was imperative to block this shift and these behavioral imperatives, even at the cost of the enhanced senses. I could not have functioned as required during the war like this. Tell me how long we have before your scrambling of locater chip ends."

Heero's ear felt so soft, and Duo wasn't sure that he ought to find that pointy little thing attractive. But damn! His belly went tight though and he pressed himself to Heero. It was forward, daring, but everything about Heero felt welcoming right then.

"Wow, just wow, Heero. The chip, should give us another hour, at least. So would wanting to kiss you count as a desire to self injure?" Duo asked, his fingers moving from Heero's ear to his hair. Duo held his lip between his teeth as he watched Heero's face for any expression, any answer.

Quatre

Trowa turned, arm around Quatre's shoulders and guided them out of the port toward a black motorcycle. Trowa threw one leg over and lifted the bike off the kickstand. Quatre watched Trowa mount the cycle, nearly hypnotized by the easy way the taller man moved. Lust and nostalgia burned in his throat, choking off any attempt at speech. Just breathing was hard enough. He was so unbalanced as he swung up on the cycle behind Trowa, he was amazed he didn't fall flat on his face.

"Helmet's strapped to the side." Trowa's helmet was already half on. Quatre noticed that built into the helmets was a local communication system – knowing Trowa, it was scrambled, just between the two helmets.

The headache was still present, dull pain clamped to the base of his skull and around his temples, threatening him with a return to nearly debilitating pain. He couldn't afford that, not if he was riding with Trowa. Trowa on a motorcycle bore more than a passing resemblance to Trowa on a trapeze, all swooping turns that depended on perfectly timed shifts of weight... and an iron grip.

Quatre grabbed another two painkillers from his pocket when he bent to retrieve the helmet, and tried to dry-swallow them. They seemed to catch on the lump in his throat, and made him cough.

From within the sleek and aerodynamic ferring, Trowa pulled a water pouch. "Here."

It was hard to tell, but from the intensity Quatre's space heart was feeling, Trowa was absorbing Quatre's every movement. He didn't think Trowa was pleased; there was a feeling of almost-grim resolve.

Taking the water with a grateful smile, Quatre drank. "Sorry," he choked out as soon as he could. "I'm ready now." He wrapped his arms around his lover's waist.

Trowa's voice was filled with tenderness. "Where do you want to go, Quatre?"

He bit back the first answer that wanted to escape him – "Away!" He had responsibilities. He had to see if Wufei had arrived, had to find Heero, had to begin looking into Duo's death... Had to deal with Amihan. He was so tired.

"We should go to the Winner suites, I suppose."

"Winner suites it is," Trowa said, voice completely neutral. But the ache in Quatre's chest whispered to him of his lover's disappointment, and Quatre wondered why Trowa was being so close-lipped about his own desires. Through the intercom between the helmets, Trowa whispered, "Hold on to me, Quatre, please, like you're never going to let me go again."

His shaking arms wrapped around Trowa's waist, and then Quatre squeezed tight. Then even tighter, and his hands took a white-knuckled grip on Trowa's jacket, shaking a bit as he whispered, "Never let go again. Never."

After Trowa started the engine, Quatre asked, shyly, "Have you eaten? Should we stop and get something to eat on the way? Wufei will be annoyed if he has to wait, and so will my sisters, but if you're hungry..." He didn't know what Trowa wanted, and hoped the open-ended question would get his lover to open up.

"I'd love to eat with you," Trowa said, a hand caressing one of Quatre's. "We should talk. They can wait. We need to find Duo and kick his ass too, or find the person who murdered him. Duo didn't kill himself, Quatre-my-heart. I know he didn't."

Quatre tried to suppress his tears. He couldn't help the trembling that ran through his body, though, and nodded, letting his head rub against Trowa's back, not trusting his voice.

The motorcycle could have been a bat out of Hell, sleek and lean, given to the merging of man and machine, black lightning under Trowa's control. Riding behind Trowa was flying, the only flying that Quatre craved, and he'd been plodding for so long. He tried to make his body flow with Trowa's. He never had been as good at flying as Trowa, and he was painfully aware each time he failed to synchronize into a turn.

Trowa navigated the twisting streets with great familiarity. If someone had been following them from the port, Trowa lost them. He idled a moment to let Quatre get a look at the establishment. The time was well worth it – their destination was a garishly lit place with neon clowns and dice that flew up in the air and rolled around in colored lights before dropping back into the clowns hand. It was retro and shrieked of expensive, as far as L2 went.

Amihan would hate it. "It's wonderful," said Quatre.

As they went around the back and down into a spotless garage, Trowa explained the place was owned by a former member of Catherine's circus and a friend of his. Said friend was also the owner of the bike. Trowa backed into the bike's slot, boots pushing against the floor.

"I hope you don't mind. We can eat here, have a private room while we do it. It's secure." Dismounting with more economy than flourish, Trowa asked, "Love, let me hold you now?"

"I don't mind, not at all." Slowly, carefully Quatre approached Trowa as though Trowa were an injured animal. "Please hold me. Please." His voice sounded pathetic and hollow to his own ears..

Both of Trowa's arms opened and pulled Quatre into a warm strong embrace.. "I want to stay with you always," Trowa held on tightly, as if trying to give back all the moments they'd missed, caressing his soft golden hair, rubbing his arms and back. "No matter what it takes. Tell me your heart, Quatre. Speak to me."

Quatre leaned into Trowa's strength, leaned into the firmly-sculpted chest and reassuringly powerful arms. He was aware, with a sense of shame, that while Trowa had added muscle and bulk, beginning to fill out his lanky height, he himself had lost weight. Lost muscle. He'd managed to keep a daily jog in his routine, but he was too easily found in his weight room, and troubles had sought him out. Eventually he'd stopped trying. He hadn't been so hungry lately, either. He'd had problems keeping food down, from both the headaches and the ibuprofen he'd taken trying to subdue them.

He hoped he wasn't too unattractive in Trowa's eyes.

"I've missed you so badly, love. So badly. I can't--" No. He wasn't going to pressure Trowa. "I don't want to be away from you any more. I don't know what you want to do or where you want to be, but I want us to be side-by-side. I don't think you'd be happy on L4, but there's got to be some way to make this work. I'm not going to lose you. When I couldn't reach you before I got here, I thought I'd waited too long."

He kissed Trowa's throat, kneaded his lover's back. Trowa's muscles were so tight beneath his hands... Had Trowa been as miserable as he? He desperately hoped not. He didn't want to be responsible for so much pain in his lover. His headache was escalating with his pulse, rhythmic spikes of pain. Very bad pain.

"Are you sure Duo didn't kill himself? Heero wasn't sure, when I talked to him. He seemed really worried that Duo had." Deep breath. He was rambling, but couldn't seem to stop. "Poor Duo. He was alone, too, and couldn't even look forward to being with the man he loved. I could... could understand, if he did. If he was so alone, and under pressure. I can understand."

"Duo didn't kill himself," Trowa said slowly, one hand reaching up to catch Quatre's chin, to lift his face so Trowa could look into his eyes. "You are not alone. You will not be alone. I love you. I need you. Let's get married. Here. On L2, we can get married. Marry me, Quatre? Let me tell the world that you are my soul?"

It was for the best that Quatre's body was already pressed to Trowa's, because at Trowa's proposal, his knees buckled. As he tried to regain some stability amidst a growing dizziness, he was overwhelmed with a wash of insecurity, paranoia, and almost unbearable loneliness from his lover.

"Quatre, I'm sorry, I don't want to rush or push, and I will follow you in any way you wish. I haven't made you angry, have I?"

"I... I... How could I be angry? You're asking me to marry you, you're willing to get dragged into my mess, following me... Yes. I want to marry you. Can we really do it now? Do we have to register, or get witnesses? Do we need blood tests? Should we..." Trowa believed. That was faith enough for Quatre. "Should we find Duo first and make him be our witness?"

"Duo will be found when he wants to," Trowa said. "We can get married now. Within the hour. No blood tests, and we can find witnesses. We can have another one later, fancier, but let's legally be married."

"Yes. I want to marry you now." Quatre shook his head, trying to shake out the fuzz, and winced in pain.

Trowa was examining him closely, face lined in worry. "Are you hurting?"

Apparently he'd noticed Quatre's wince. That was no good, he didn't want Trowa to worry. He smiled for Trowa, the first smile he'd wanted to make in what seemed a long time. He hoped it was a good smile. He was starting to feel very light-headed with pain, and the world was spinning. "Just a headache. Nothing to worry about. Let's go get married."

The lines on Trowa's face grew more pronounced.

The throbbing was getting worse. Noisier, and the world was decidedly spinny. The thud-thud in his head might start to drown out Trowa's words, and he really didn't want that to happen. Trowa's words were precious, rarer than diamonds and more unbreakable. It would be a crime to lose any. He unwrapped an arm from around Trowa and slammed the palm of his hand into his head, right above his ear. It jarred the thud-thud out of his ears, and into his eyes, where it became a swirling bright light that grew, and then diminished back into a pinprick.

That was better. He pulled out two painkillers. They might help.

"Did you need to eat before we got married? Or do we go now?" He fumbled, lifting the pills to his mouth, and Trowa had to catch them before they fell to the floor.

"No more painkillers. We will find you a doctor, then we will get married," Trowa said, holding Quatre very close, very tenderly. "We have friends here, Quatre."

Quatre pouted as Trowa pocketed the pills away. "I need those! Please. I don't want to miss any of your words, if the thuds go back to my ears." He wrapped his arms around Trowa's neck as Trowa scooped him up and began carrying him through the garage. "Are you allowed to carry me like this before we get married? I didn't think you were."

Chills made him shiver,and he wasn't sure when he had gotten so cold. He wasn't sure what was wrong, but something was, and he thought it was probably wrong with him. There was lots wrong with him. He'd been finding that out the last few months. It seemed everyone had something new that was wrong with him that he needed to know about.

"Trowa? I think we should get married first. I'm not sure I'm making sense, but I want to be married. I need you to be the one who would make decisions for me. I don't think I'm feeling quite well."

"We will get married first," Trowa said, pressing the elevator button.

"You're frowning. Are you angry? I'm very sorry. I know it doesn't count for much, but I'm sorry. I know it's my fault."

Quatre held on tighter, in case Trowa realized it was his fault and dropped him.

Not that Trowa would do that. Allah, he wasn't making sense, and he didn't know why not.


	8. Chapter 8

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive, http://www.gundam-wing-diaries. all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

[xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 8

Trowa

"How long have you been having headaches like this, Quatre? Have you seen a doctor?"

That Quatre was this sick only supported his reasoning that Duo had been killed. Maybe they were both being poisoned. Trowa was a deep cover agent – often his life depended on finding motives and extrapolating actions on the part of his opponents. It was too much for coincidence that Duo was either desperate enough to stage his own death, or murdered, and Quatre was in too much pain to even hear.

"I'm sorry, don't mean to babble. I... I don't know how long I've had the headaches. The roses help, even though I don't think I like them very much. I couldn't see a doctor. That would give them a vulnerability. That's not a nice thing to think about my sisters, is it? It's not good to think such things about my sisters."

Trowa was thinking that Quatre's sisters might need to see a doctor, but he wasn't going to say it. "I am not angry at you, Quatre, my heart. This is not your fault, but we will follow your heart and if you don't like the roses, then we will have some other flowers at our wedding. I love you and I trust you with my life and heart, Quatre. Whatever is going on, I'm going to find out, and stop it."

"Good." Quatre smiled, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. "I must have drawn the wrong conclusion. But the roses help, you know."

Once they were in the elevator, the intercom kicked in. "Trowa, you bring my bike back in one piece?" a sultry female voice said.

"Yes, Mayonaka, I did. I need a priest and a doctor though, as quickly as possible," Trowa said, rubbing Quatre's shoulder lightly.

"Sure thing. Someone dying in my elevator?"

"Nope. Getting married."

Slightly more squeamish. "Someone giving birth in my elevator?"

Trowa smiled, touched his cheek to Quatre's soft golden hair. "Anything's possible, but no babies just at this moment."

With a sigh of relief, Mayonaka said, "Must be some of each of those running around the casino. Any particular religion?"

"Not for me. Love? Any particular faith you want to get married in? I think a judge might work too. May, you're the best, you know that, right?"

"Oh yeah, you just wait till you get the bill!"

Quatre had fallen silent, but when he opened his eyes, they had lost the glassiness that had snuck into them and regained some focus. "A judge, I think. Any religious official would have to go to the judge eventually to have it legalized. It would be faster to skip that step. Besides, in Islam, a marriage is a legal contract, not a sacrament. We can always have the Al Nikah – the religious service – and the wedding banquet afterwards. And Miss? Thank you for your help."

A gentle but shaky hand stroked Trowa's face. "I'm worrying you, love. I don't want to do that. It's just been more difficult than I'd expected, that's all."

Trowa shivered from Quatre's touch, a very warm pleasure response. "To hear you call me love, I would walk on fire. And not the basalt kind that doesn't really burn you. It'll get easier. Then I'm gonna kick Maxwell's ass," Trowa said the last bit with a smile and a wink.

Blushing, Quatre hid his face in Trowa's shoulder. "I'll call you love every day. You don't have to walk through fire. And don't kick Duo's ass. I feel awful saying this, but if he hadn't taken action... I don't know. I was getting so lost. I'm so glad to be here."

The elevator doors opened onto an expensive suite. Trowa set Quatre down in cushy armchair and knelt to be at eye level. "Do you order roses from the same place each time? What kind of roses?"

"They've been from several different florists. They're Louis the Fourteenth -- that's the name of the variety." Quatre was sprawling in the chair, not in in his usual well-mannered posture. He looked entirely limp, except for the hand against Trowa's cheek, softly brushing it. "Dark, dark red, like blood. The scent is soothing, that's all."

Dark, dark red… that phrase and the way Quatre said it set screaming alarms off in Trowa's head. They came from different florists, though, so unless it was Quatre's asinine executive assistant... The roses were probably just an emotional icon for something in Quatre's soul.

"I think I was dying without you, Quatre. Let's just get married and be together. We'll take care of everything else after that?" Trowa knelt before Quatre, smiling at him, willing this illness just to be depression that would leave now that they were together again.

"Yes. Married first, and no more living colonies apart." Quatre's smile was real and reached his eyes, though there were still pain lines at the corners and between his brows.

He pulled Trowa's head into his lap, and slowly stroked his hair. Trowa drew a deep breath, relaxing under Quatre's touch. Under his calm was a tornado of emotion, but it was just a low hum. Trowa almost couldn't get himself to see past the next moment, to see them married. This type of moment was what he needed Duo for, to show him the happiness and possibility and show him how to express those emotions.

"Later, we'll have a beautiful ceremony too? You'll marry me in front of everyone?" He wasn't sure why insecurity would touch him. Quatre was here. Quatre was so important to him. Quatre was everything.

"If you like, we can invite the L2 media in right now and show this simple little ceremony to the entire Earth Sphere," came the murmured response. "I don't need decorations or fancy flowers and cakes to be proud of pledging myself to you. I do want to have another ceremony later, where we can pledge with our friends by our side, though, and promising to support our marriage. It would be nice to have music, and a banquet, too. I'd love to see you in a tuxedo. You're so tall, maybe one with the long tails? And a pocket-watch, on a long chain."

All the while, he ran his fingers in long strokes through Trowa's hair, over his neck, down his back, as if trying to reassure every inch of Trowa's skin that they were reunited.

Trowa's breathing relaxed and he looked up at Quatre. Only Quatre had ever seen, or would ever see, the deepest parts of Trowa and he was suddenly so happy he could have sang. "I don't care if they're here or not," Trowa said, his smile genuine and open. "I'll have a black tuxedo and you'll have a white one?"

Quatre tapped a finger against his lips, playing at deep thought. "Much better a white tuxedo than a dress, I think."

There was a polite knock and Trowa looked at Quatre for permission to open the door. Quatre seemed unwilling to let him go, though, and called out, "Come in, please!"

Then he winced, as though calling out had hurt.

"Hello boys!" The Lady Mayonaka was Asian, possibly a touch African in heritage. Her hair was a celtic knot of slender braids rising over her head like the coming of a black sunrise. She was tall for a woman, with full lips and pale green eyes that probably weren't the ones she had been born with. She wore long nails and a slinky evening gown in vivid greens and blues and purples. When she smiled, her teeth were extra pointed at the canines, and those weren't likely the ones she'd been born with either. "Boys, I'd like you to meet the Honorable Judge Sausuke Minpole."

Right behind her was a slender figure, short for a man. He was delicate in features, with thin lips, but interested blue eyes. "Gentlemen," he said, giving them a rather formal bow. "I understand there is a rather pressing need for L2's finest judicial services."

Trowa looked at Mayonaka, to Minpole, back again. "We want to get married, legally."

"Well, of course you do!" Minpole said, a wave of slender hand as he pulled a small computer from inside his vest pocket. "Are you both prepared to give genetic samples to establish your identity?"

"Certainly," said Quatre, offering a finger for sample-scraping. "We very much appreciate this, Your Honor, especially on such short notice. And Miss Mayonaka, I hope I haven't put you out too much! We're really in your debt!" Keeping a steadying hand on Trowa's shoulder, he stood to shake hands with their benefactors.

Trowa maintained absolute stillness, feeling the slight tremors running through Quatre, and very much wanted a doctor to see Quatre. One or two would, but this came first.

Mayonaka smiled, offering her hand, and Trowa very much hoped she didn't go off on his golden-haired angel for calling her 'Miss.' One could never quite tell with Mayonaka, but her history was her own and Trowa didn't care as long as no one was getting hurt, especially not Quatre. "My pleasure," Mayonaka said.

Minpole took Quatre's hand after Mayonaka. "There'd be no decent legal system here if you lot had not been there for us. Granted, we're a little relaxed here on in L2, but that's the way we like it. Are we doing a life bond or a shorter period partnership?"

"Life," Trowa said, rising smoothly, so as not to interrupt Quatre's balance.

"Well, now," Minpole said, arching an eyebrow. "Are you sure? Usually people chose a shorter term to start with. Do you have any paperwork done up for legal opt-out clauses?"

"No," Trowa said, looking back at Quatre, to see if he felt the same.

"No, no opt-out clauses. Full joint property, if that's ok with you, Trowa. We're old-fashioned that way, I suppose, but after having been without Trowa for so long, I know I never want to be in that state again."

"No opt-out clauses," Trowa said. If they'd been alone he would have continued with 'I will be with Quatre unless I'm not breathing.'

"Very well," Minpole said. "This is a civil ceremony bonded by the authority of L2 Central. The union of these two lives, here identified as Trowa Barton and Quatre Raberba Winner, is a simple union and indissoluble, including property, both assets and debts. You do both pledge emotional support and should discord arise, you pledge to work with due diligence to resolve said conflicts. The purpose of your union is to support those around you with the harmony and good will that will arise from the intimacy between your hearts and bodies. Is it your solemn and abiding oath to support each other through your relationship and the community around you with good will and good faith?"

Trowa nodded. "I do."

"I do."

"Then by the authority invested in me by the Confederated Colonies of LaGrange Point 2, I pronounce you espoused, until death do you part." Minpole winked. "You may kiss your spouse."

Quatre turned his face up to Trowa, eyes closed, awaiting his kiss.

Joy. Acceptance. Trowa touched Quatre's cheek, fingers caressing gently over smooth skin. Without words, he leaned and touched his lips to Quatre's, tender, loving, joyful.

"I always knew you'd end up pregnant," Mayonaka teased. "Congratulations, by the way. What a lovely couple you make! We should have gotten pics."

As soon as their kiss ended, Trowa wrapped both arms around his mate and turned to Mayonaka. "Now we need to see a doctor. A competent one."

"Love, really, it's ok. We can wait to see a doctor until later. We do have quite a bit to do..." Quatre whispered.

"Will either of you be requesting a name change? I can file that with this order as well," Minpole suggested, his smile warm and nostalgic.

"I... I don't know. What do you think, husband-mine?"

Name... that was deep in Trowa's heart and he couldn't possibly ask to share Quatre's name. It was a good and sweet name. "We'll think about it." About the other, though... "I will feel more at ease after a doctor has seen you, Quatre. Please? Your health is of great importance to me."

"Dr. Tam is on her way up. Maybe you should lay down on the bed? Minpole? Maybe we'll leave them to themselves. Wedding night and all."

Trowa blushed, chin tucking towards his chest., and Quatre turned scarlet at the friendly teasing. "Ah... Thank you both so much! I hope we haven't inconvenienced you at all... This makes us so happy, and we app--"

Trowa ended the sincere but rambling gratitude with a kiss. The door closed behind Minpole and Mayonaka, and he wanted to take advantage of the few moments of privacy to catch up on some of what they'd both been missing so badly.

Heero

"So would wanting to kiss you count as a desire to self injure?"

"Why would that count as...?" Heero's puzzled question trailed off as Duo pressed tight against him, all bone and sinew beneath the negligible padding of clothing, and Heero wanted to pull that wiry hardness against him so tightly that Duo's body would leave bruises on his own, leaving an outline of Duo's form on himself that would last for days. There was an especially compelling hardness pressing at Heero's hip and thigh, and realizing what it meant, Heero growled, a guttural, nearly groaning sound, and pressed his lips to Duo's. He plunged his tongue into Duo's heat, feasting on the taste, and the sensations of the kiss blurred with the feeling of Duo's ass beneath his kneading palm into a firm, richly salty blur of Duo.

Duo moaned, his body melting to Heero's as he opened his mouth, welcomed and caressed Heero's tongue with his own. His back arched, offering his ass to Heero.

Heero jumped, a tiny startled motion, at Duo's moan. His lips slipped from Duo's mouth, allowing him to taste Duo's cheek, his porcelain edge of Duo's jaw, the nub and whorls of Duo's ear, and the hidden hollows of Duo's neck, veiled beneath the shortened hair. The harsh scent of the dye was jarring though, and broke Heero out of his sensual trance. He pulled his head up, wrinkling his nose.

"I appear to desire you sexually." Heero blinked, and he could feel the heat in his cheeks heightening. "Extremely intensely. You don't seem to object, but... I am concerned. I will be extremely unhappy if I damage you. Perhaps we should wait until I resume my normal form. And... why does your hair smell so strange?"

"My hair doesn't smell strange," Duo protested, instinctively defending his pride, then doing a double-take as he remembered the dye. "It smells like I got it bleached and colored. Can't have people recognizing me, yeah?" He tipped his chin towards his chest, perhaps remembering the loss of his braid. The gesture made Heero's chest hurt.

"It wouldn't smell bad forever, I don't think. Can you still be sexually attracted to me?" Duo looked up, the hand that had been in Heero's hair moving back to touch his own hair, a wondering expression on his face at the feel of the very soft shortness.

Heero ducked his head. "I am sorry you had to do that. I shouldn't have let them keep me from you, get between us." His grip on Duo tightened noticeably. "Une will be dealt with. Cromwell will be dealt with. My Pack will be together again, and we will do what is necessary to protect ourselves."

As he realized the force of his grip, Heero whispered an apology, releasing his hold and stroking Duo's hair with both hands. "I can still desire you. I still do. I didn't expect to feel it this strongly." Heero shook his head, looking almost baffled.

"I guess I had a little practice desiring you. I have for years, you know? Come on, let's get back to the ship." Duo turned, his braid slipping from his shoulders. He caught it and handed it back to Heero. "Here. You can have it, if you want it. And I already dealt with Une and Cromwell. They'll never hear from me again. "

Heero took the braid, carefully coiling it, as though he was fearful of hurting it, and tucked it down the front of his shirt. "The ship? A Sweeper ship?" He caught hold of Duo's hand. "You have run from Une and Cromwell. They are not dealt with. I do not understand what they were trying to do. I do not know why Une threatened you into therapy in the first place. Her diary entries on you bother me. There is something wrong there, and it is a threat to you.

"We will find out what she wanted. We will find out what drugs you were being given. We will find out if it threatens anyone else. And I will make it clear to both of them that they will not be allowed to hurt what is mine." Heero's smile flashed those wickedly enlarged canine teeth again.

Duo

"God save my soul," Duo muttered, "Those teeth. Those are sexy. You're sexy. God," he muttered shivering and licking a lip as he gave Heero's hand a squeeze. "Yeah, a Sweeper ship. We'll be safe there. I was just taking antidepressants."

He didn't want to talk about it. Thinking about therapy and the drugs, all of it, just brought back Cromwell's words.. .the way he'd implied that Duo was broken beyond repair, that he was dangerous and poisonous. The feelings that came with that were almost enough to make Duo cry again and he just wanted... to start over. He was likely the only target and they were probably just trying to protect people from him. He wasn't worth enough, not good enough, to be Heero's.

Duo put a hand to his temple, as Cromwell's voice grew stronger in his head. "I'm not a bad person, Heero? Am I? Really? You wouldn't have cried for me if I was a bad person, would you?"

Peering at his face in concern, Heero pulled Duo close by his side. "I... I don't know if there are good and bad people. People just do things. Sometimes the things are good, and sometimes bad, but... it's complicated." He spoke slowly, trying to put into words the conclusions he'd come to at the end of the war, when enemies had become allies, and allies had tried to destroy the planet. "You can do something that seems good to you at the time, and it turns out to be bad in the long run. All you can do is follow your feelings, and when you make mistakes, try to make amends.

"I've seen you do many good things. You saved Relena from me. You fought and were hurt because you thought it was the only way to protect the people of the colonies. You take care of the people around you, like paying for your neighbor's lease. You hurt so much when you see people hurting around you, that I think you are unlikely to hurt other people unless you have to. I think that makes you a good person, or at least a person who doesn't do many bad things.

"But even if you started to do bad things, you would still be my Duo. And because you're my Duo, I would have to stop you, and then help you. The others would come help, too. Because you're ours." He blushed again, ever so slightly. "You four are all mine, but you are... special to me. Even before, during the war, when J had me on the drugs, you were special. Now that I'm not on the drugs, there are more things I want to do with you, and things I need to do with you, but it was always about you. I would not be well without you."

"I'm special?" Duo rubbed his cheek against Heero's chest, thinking about that. Somehow even despite Heero's kiss, he'd thought that Heero would have done this for any of them. It was just... Heero being more emotional than Duo had expected, it wasn't about Duo.. but ... Duo's arms tightened, holding Heero with all his heart.

"Heero! You're special to me too. You're everything! I don't know how, how to be a good lover, but I'll try. I'll do my best, Heero, to be a good partner for you. So like, will you be my boyfriend?"

Duo tilted his head back, grinning, feeling terrified. This was too good, too sweet, too normal, and he had no right to something this sweet and good. Yet he wanted it so badly that he could cry just for the nearness of Heero, and Heero actually liking him as more than just a friend. Seeing him as more than a tool. Incredible.

"Your boyfriend?" Heero sounded as though Duo had asked him to perform brain surgery. Perhaps brain surgery would have made him less apprehensive -- after all, there were books to be read and experts to be interrogated on the subject of brain surgery. "I will try. I'm afraid I will not be good at it. Even if I am bad at it, I do not think I could let you go. I admit to some qualms about the ways I have felt recently. I do not seem to be entirely normal. Unfortunately, I do not know a way to recreate the drugs that J gave me which suppressed these feelings."

Then, in an almost shamed whisper, "I am not sure I want to. It seems wrong to change myself so I no longer need to protect my Pack."

"You're better at it than anyone else could be," Duo said, fingers reaching up to touch Heero's lips. "I don't want you to go back to being not who you are. I want to know you as you really are. You're beautiful, Heero. I love you."

"I..." Heero's hands clenched, and the fangs again emerged to bite his lip. "I am very happy that you said that. I feel more whole. I feel... I want to... I am not sure..."

"Let's get back to the ship and get that chip out of you... Unless you want to keep your place at the Preventers? Then I have a room and it's safe, private and we can really talk, okay?" Duo's fingers reached for Heero's ears again. "So soft. Gods, such a turn-on." Duo grinned, feeling as though his heart was opening and warming, like brand-new butterfly wings.

"After I speak with Une, the absence of my chip will be be the least of her problems with me. You need to see her files concerning you." Heero's hand stroked down Duo's neck, and rubbed gently above his collarbone. "Before we go to your ship, can I... mark you? With my teeth? It will hurt. I don't want to hurt you – but I want to mark you, very badly. I think it will help settle me back to normal. I do not think the Sweepers would be comfortable with the tail. Or the ears."

Duo blushed, a hand moving from Heero's ear to his own hair, tucking stray flyaways behind his ear. "Mark me, Heero? I'd like that. You're gonna hold me while you do it though? Oh man, Heero, where do you want to mark me at?"

Something perilously like a smile flashed across Heero's face. "I like it when your face is pink like that. You are very attractive." He continued to rub along the arc from neck to Duo's left shoulder, the skin warming under his touch. "Here. It will usually show, though you could hide it if necessary. And I will hold you."

Duo pressed closer to Heero, making no attempt to hide his excitement. He pushed his shirt down a little, exposing pale spacer skin. "I can take my shirt off, if you want?"

As soon as the shirt was pushed aside, Heero had his lips against Duo's neck, nibbling and sucking at the skin. His arms were wound tight around Duo's waist and shoulders, and they were trembling with Heero's excitement.

Duo moaned as Heero's kisses moved over his skin. Heero was his boyfriend! He hadn't thought that would ever be possible. One leg hooked around Heero's, even as his hand slipped under Heero's shirt, working to get near his boyfriend's skin. "Heero!"

Fangs broke skin at Duo's cry; teeth set into Duo's neck to pin him still. The sharp spiking pain of the bite on sensitized skin was quickly replaced by searing heat, as though Heero's fangs were molten metal, and were melting into the soft flesh. The heat spread across the rest of Duo's skin, losing the fierce intensity as it expanded across his body. A ripple of chills and gooseflesh played harbinger to the flush of heat from Duo's neck, up to his face, and down his torso, spreading across his extremities until even his fingers and toes felt as though he'd spent hours curled in a sunny window, or had slid into a deep, hot tub. The sensation was incredibly relaxing. Aftershocks of lesser heat pulsed from the bite across Duo's body, slowly subsiding into a blissful warmth.

Duo felt like he floated in Heero's arms, so strong, and he trusted him, with all that he was. His head tilted back and he faintly remembered screaming at the moment of the bite, but maybe that hadn't been him. A sense of belonging flooded him, lifted him, and he didn't fully understand magic or what Heero was, or anything more than just the dead spirits that came around to talk to him from time to time, and this... this was life. His voice was soft, fluttery. "Heero. You're mine, too."

With a shudder, Heero unclamped his mouth from Duo's skin. He rolled his head to the side just a little, still resting it against Duo's shoulder and his sigh of contentment blew the short strands of hair in a tickling caress. "Yes."

Wufei

He'd pulled himself together shortly after they'd boarded the shuttle to L2, and had been surprised by how well his Commander had done the same. She'd stayed with him, without speaking a word, until he'd excused himself to the shuttle facilities to clean up. Then she'd gotten on the line with the L2 office and had begun to organize the situation as efficiently as ever. It was as though the breakdown in her office had never occurred.

The coroner's office had been able to confirm that the DNA on the body matched Maxwell's, for the most part. The impact site had not been precisely clean prior to the impact, and the technician who had performed the analysis speculated, quite irately, that not only had the officers on site failed to follow proper evidence handling procedures, but that the scene had been contaminated by non-Preventer personnel.

At the very least, there were DNA traces of 8 individuals aside from Maxwell -- and aside from the Preventer agents on site -- on the remains.

But it was Maxwell, to a 99 certainty.

The condition of the remains made finding identifying marks – in Maxwell's case, scars and a few birthmarks – extremely difficult. None had been concretely identified yet. The technician was willing to try to assemble enough bone fragment to match dental records – if, of course, the Commander thought it an appropriate use of Preventer funds.

The Commander had given him a sidelong glance and said she would think on it.

She interrogated the agents on the scene. They'd been alerted to a possible problem by the neighbor, who had been alarmed by Maxwell's offering of perishable food and announcement that his lease would transfer to her upon event of his death. She'd contacted the office, as she'd been asked to do if he ever demonstrated any signs of instability.

Later interrogation of the woman had revealed Maxwell talking about a "long mission" that was "dangerous," and about "wanting to be with the person he loved."

He'd exchanged a long look with the Commander at that comment. He was certain he'd seen her flinch.

All reports agreed that the scene had been a chaotic disaster, and Une had chastised the agent for multiple failures to follow proper procedures. Wufei had a sense that proper procedures were a rare beast at this branch. Reconstruction of the scene had, in the end, required the timestamp on media footage. The agent proudly announced that they were able, now, to completely refute statements in the media that Maxwell had been pushed to his death by a fellow agent.

She interrogated the officer assigned as Yuy's liaison. Wufei vaguely remembered ordering one to be assigned when he'd found out that Yuy was already en route. Agent Parks was able to confirm that Agent Yuy had, in fact, been responsible for leaking the suicide note to the media. Even worse, he'd handed over the original, though steps were being taken to get it back.

Wufei buried his face in his hands.

With no small amount of trepidation, Agent Parks went on to state that Agent Yuy had removed a second piece of critical evidence from Preventer custody. Upon viewing the remains, Yuy had removed the severed braid from the sealed bag. Her narrative increased in speed and decreased in volume and clarity, and Wufei only caught scattered words – "screamed," "photograph," and "missing."

The last one commanded his attention. "Yuy is missing?"

"Sir, we didn't think he'd just run off like that! We didn't have enough agents to begin a proper search pattern, and I couldn't find him by myself, he had a huge head start. Anyway, it's against protocol for an agent to pursue without backup."

"And you didn't want to be the one who found him," he said without rancor. He couldn't blame her for that.

She shuddered. "You didn't hear him scream. I've never heard a noise like that in my life."

Une had called up another news feed window. He groaned. The media field day was continuing – there was a shot, grainy and poorly focused, of Heero on his knees. He was clutching a chestnut-brown bundle to his chest, and his face was thrown back, caught in the midst of the scream that had so unnerved Agent Parks. There appeared to be tears on his face.

"The morgue attendant had a camera on his cell phone. I suppose he made a tidy profit selling this picture," said Une distractedly. "Thank you, Agent Parks. You're dismissed."

She continued her search, headlines coming up. Yuy was well on his way to having created an urban legend. People, even some who were over a mile away, claimed to have heard the scream. Some of them claimed to have heard the howl of a wolf instead. There were reports that dogs all over the colony had simultaneously begun barking and baying. One breeder claimed all her animals were behaving fearfully, hiding and whimpering, with one bitch having gone so far as hiding her litter in the water reclamation unit.

"This is a nightmare," muttered Wufei.

Une's hands faltered at the keyboard.

"No," she said, with a strange quaver in her voice. "No, it isn't."

She opened a communications window to the L2 Branch, and spoke to the Branch Commander. She snapped out a series of orders. "Confirm our revised ETA. Accommodations for me only, if you please, as Agent Chang has made other arrangements. Schedule a private meeting with me to go over the multiple mistakes made during this process, and a later one with all active Agents. We're going to make it clear that following protocol is mandatory."

"I understand that Agent Yuy is missing." She sighed, and gave another uncomfortable sidelong glance at Wufei. "Can he be located via the subcutaneous tracker?"

"No, ma'am. We're having massive interference with the datastream. I have technicians working to resolve the problems."

Une nodded and closed the communications window.

"Subcutaneous tracker?" Wufei was very proud of his control. The question came out in a conversational tone and volume.

"The Senate committee couldn't be talked out of it, Chang. I'm sorry. Relena and I were able to overrule the demands to include anything active – there were officials who did not want to be dependent on the rest of you to take one of you out, should it become necessary. There aren't any incapacitating agents in the chips, I made certain of that. But you were all implanted with tracking chips, and I was not authorized to inform you.

"In all honesty, Chang – are you really surprised?" She looked tired.

"I..." He was surprised. Not that the government had insisted upon it, but that she hadn't told him. He'd counted upon her candor with him and the betrayal felt uncomfortably personal. "I will have to think about it. I will inform the other pilots."

"Good." She seemed sincere. "I think... you all have some decisions you have to make. I will support you in whatever you choose, Chang. You all deserve better than what you've gotten."

Her voice soothed a little of the turmoil in his heart.

Heero

"Mine," Duo said, possessively, the kind of tone he would never back down on. In the back of Heero's head, where his instincts ruled – the part of him that had wanted to bite Duo and mark him, needed to do it, however strange it might seem – Heero basked in a deep contentment that his mate understood the relationship.

Then there was another shudder, and suddenly Heero wasn't bearing his own weight terribly well as his entire body trembled. Duo's arms went around him, holding him. He felt hollow – more than hungry, more than exhausted, a total emptiness that demanded he plummet into unconsciousness. The last time he'd felt like this was right before he'd tried to shoot that little girl... Actually, it felt a lot like he had in the months after self-destructing; the parts of it he'd been even marginally awake for, at least.

"Is this normal?" Duo asked. One hand moved up to cradle Heero's head, holding him safe. As his hand moved over Heero's hair, it became clear to both of them that the pointed little ears were now gone. Heero knew the tail was gone again, too.

"I do not know." His voice was back to a monotone. Hopefully Duo would know that the cause was exhaustion, not emotional distancing. "I have never done that before. It feels right to have done it to you."

There was a sudden surge of panic as Heero realized what he'd done – he'd bitten his mate hard enough to draw blood. No matter how right it felt to him, that had to have upset Duo. "Are you well?"

"I'm fine. I want to get you back to the ship and have Doc check you out though. Get some food and rest for you. Gonna bite me again if I carry you?" Duo smirked, blue hair falling in his face as he tilted his head to look in Heero's eyes.

Heero did a double-take, nearly tripping himself. "Your hair is blue!"

"Uh, yeah," Duo said, grinning like his face was stuck that way, half grimace. "I said I didn't care what color, and I was thinking, you know red or something, but I either had to get my hair bleached and stuff again, or just come get you and you were more important. I hope I don't look too awful... And gee, Heero. You're just now noticing?"

"No. Not awful Just... blue." A shaking hand reached up to stroke the blue locks. "Blue. Hn. It appears that I do not see color very well in that state. I have never had the ears or the tail before, but when I was close to it, I suppose, I did notice that things appeared mostly in black and white." Heero found himself unwilling to pull his hand away. "Blue," he repeated.

Duo shivered from the gentle touch of Heero's fingers in his hair. "Yeah. I like you touching my hair. It feels really different than when it was long. You touching my hair makes me shiver. Wanna make love? Here and now? How are you feeling? Do you feel okay?" Duo blushed – was he ashamed of his desire? Why? Heero wanted Duo to desire him.

"I would like to. Unfortunately, I do not think I would be able to move for at least an hour afterwards. And this is... not the best setting." Eyeing the stark metal of the shaft, Heero considered it against the way he wanted to thrust and pound, and remembered how easily his strength bruised other people, even when his control was perfect. Which it hadn't been for weeks. "No. Since I am not capable of supporting you right now, we cannot make love here. I will touch your hair again somewhere else, if it pleases you."

"It pleases me," Duo said, cautiously moving so his arm was around Heero's waist, "Come on. What are we going to do with the braid? If we leave it, someone might look at this place like a crime scene or something, but we can't be seen with it either. Man, we would have been harder to recognize with you in your fuzzy form." Duo's smile was teasing, playful, welcoming, and Heero used it to find just a little more energy to begin moving.

"We would have attracted unwelcome atten... You are teasing me." Heero wrapped his arm around Duo's shoulders, leaning heavily on his boyfriend. "I put your braid down my shirt for safekeeping earlier, remember? I will not let it be lost." He paused. "Will it need regular care? Washing? Brushing? Hot oil treatments?"

"What? My braid? No, just shove it in a bag and then in a drawer. It used to be important to me, but when I realized I couldn't be near you without giving it up, it didn't matter anymore. You matter, and Heero, have you ever been in downtown L2? Ever hear about old Tokyo? As you're Japanese, I'd think you'd know about Harajuku, and trust me, ears and a tail, some places on L2, you'd fit right in. Hungry?" Duo asked, his hold on Heero firm but gentle as he propelled them both towards the entrance. Heero let his mate guide them, and focused his attention on not falling over. "I bet Une's chewing on her tongue because she can't find you."

"I was trying to tease you. About the hot oil, at least. I will have to practice more; I do not seem to be very good at it." Heero let Duo guide him to where Howard's ship was waiting, and he let Duo's voice guide him away from the edge of rage, where he'd perched all those long lonely months, and toward a strange and lovely place called contentment.


	9. Chapter 9

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive:  , http://www.gundam-wing-diaries. all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

[xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 9

Quatre

Once they were alone, Quatre sank into the chair, and Trowa knelt down beside him. Pulling Trowa's head into his lap, Quatre slowly stroked the thick, soft hair, willing the rest of the world away. This was what he'd needed for so long, been soul-starved without. Only with Trowa could he craft a little bubble to keep the rest of the world, with the strain and stress and worries. They'd first found it when they'd played music together, this safe space in which to breathe and heal before returning to the responsibilities of the war. Then they'd found the same peace from touching each other -- it didn't have to be sex, though sex was wonderful -- they just needed to touch, and to concentrate fully on the other. Even his empathy was blocked... Quatre had always thought it was so busy with Trowa's contentment at those times that nothing else could get through.

How could he ever have thought he could live in peace without Trowa by his side? Quatre had never been more certain of anything. The rest of his life might be in the process of explosive decompression, but Trowa was his still, stable center.

"Husband-mine..." Just addressing Trowa by his new title brought a silly smile to his face. "You didn't say... would you like to hyphenate our names? Or should I take yours? You're welcome to mine, if you think you can put up with all the baggage, and the fits Amihan will be throwing. We could even pick a new one... I'd like to link our names somehow, if you don't mind."

"I'd like to share your name. I wish I had a new first name too. Will you give me a name, Quatre?" Trowa smiled, head tilted slightly, and Quatre could feel how vulnerable, how completely open and comfortable Trowa felt with him. Though there was an undercurrent of fear and tension that was all the more worrying for the degree to which it was subterranean – was it being deliberately repressed, or was it something Trowa didn't ven know he was feeling?

"I'd love to share Winner with you. That way everyone who hears it knows you're my family, now. Forever." Quatre wriggled his hands under Trowa's shirt. "A new first name? You really want one? I..." He blinked, and then began to rub his forehead in circles against Trowa's shoulder. "I don't think I've ever named anything but a hamster in my life. I may not be very good at it. We certainly don't want to name you Fluffy Winner."

"You can name me Fluffy if you want. It's better than Noname."

Unsure of how to answer such a serious response to his teasing comment, Quatre found his reply derailed by a sharp double rap at the door. "Is that the doctor, do you think?"

A mask fell over Trowa's face as he rose. "Let me get the door."

It was the doctor, a very prim woman, carrying a black bag. "Hello. I am Doctor Tam. Which of you is feeling unwell?"

Trowa closed the door behind her.

"Ah, I'm afraid I've had some trouble with headaches lately. We appreciate your --"

"I see. All right." The doctor turned and strode to Quatre, dismissing Trowa entirely. Round-lensed glasses perched on her nose, her hair was pulled into a tight, tight bun, and every pleat and fold of her lab coat, buttoned-up blouse and trousers was crisp. "Tell me your name, please."

"Quatre Raberba Winner. Thank you for --"

"Keep your head still and follow my finger with your eyes only. Can you tell me the date?"

"Ah, it's --"

"Keep your head still while you are answering, please."

She continued her brusque examination, checking his vital signs and running through a standard neurological checkup, adeptly cutting off all of Quatre's attempts at pleasantries as she interrogated him about the headaches. She also performed some unfamiliar checks, comparing the pulses in each wrist, looking carefully at his gums, palpating spots along his spine. 

When she removed a needle and several empty vials from her pocket, Quatre caught a glimpse of fur-lined handcuffs in there, too. Hmm. Perhaps this casino offered some... err, special facilities in addition to the usual games of chance.

After taking several samples of blood, she waved Trowa over next to Quatre. "You're the husband who wanted him looked over? Good. All right. His symptoms don't point to any underlying serious neurological condition, such as brain tumors. I would like him to undergo some brain imaging and neural conduction tests to completely rule out the possibility, but I doubt we'll find anything. All right? That's the good news.

"The bad news is that he is not a healthy man, and I cannot pinpoint the reason. I've taken several vials of blood, because I want to do a thorough toxicological workup. I'd like a urine sample as well, before I leave. There seems to be a slowly progressing degradation of performance in multiple systems, possibly tied into excessive autonomic system activity." She frowned. "In traditional medicine terms, he has a notable excess of yin energy in all of his systems. I'll contact you with a time and lab location for the tests I'd like to have run, and I'll let you know the results of the blood analysis. I'm assuming that you want..." Her mouth twisted. "...Discretion here, so it will take a little time to arrange." 

Quatre was getting a bit tired of having her address her conclusions exclusively to Trowa, but he'd been a bit tired of everything lately.

"For immediate treatment -- appropriate aromatherapy remedies would include rosemary and chamomile. Possibly lemon. Not roses. I'm going to prescribe a painkiller that's a little less likely to abrade the stomach lining away. Stop the ibuprofen altogether, unless the concept of a stomach ulcer appeals to you. There's a reason for the dosing instructions, you know. I will also include a narcotic painkiller prescription if the pain continues to interfere with sleep, but use it sparingly, please. With the excess of yin energy, the last thing we need to be doing is further sedating him."

She paused until Trowa nodded. "Good. All right. If you are interested, I can show you some acupressure manipulations that you can perform on him as well, both to manage the pain and to help restore the yang energies."

Trowa looked at Quatre, as if seeking his approval. "We would like any help. Are there behaviors that can increase yang energy?"

"I'm certain you can find a way to infuse your husband with your yang energy." Her tone was dry, but not unkind. She pulled a sample cup and a paper bag out of her her black bag and handed them to Quatre. "Give me a sample, please, and I will show your husband some acupressure points."

Quatre took the items and walked towards the facilities door. In his peripheral vision, he saw the doctor take Trowa's palm in her hand and heard her instruct him on how to locate a point. He was surprised by the strength of his urge to go back and wrap his arms around his husband, to show this doctor that Trowa was his. It was stupid; Trowa wouldn't ever cheat on him. He just didn't want her touching his Trowa. But he wouldn't embarrass Trowa by making a fuss.

Trowa

Trowa listened carefully as Doctor Tam explained and demonstrated the pressure points on his hands. He liked this doctor very much. He didn't know much about pressure points, but the idea was fascinating. He would learn more. At that, he realized the idea of healing fascinated him. He had a new name now, Fluffy Winner, and suddenly he was grinning, which made the doctor's eyes narrow. There was a whole world of possibility open to him.

After the door shut behind Quatre, the doctor paused her instructions. "I have no talent at psychiatry. But I am disturbed that he did not list depression and feelings of sadness in his list of symptoms. I would expect them, given the rest of the constellation of findings. Perhaps he has not had any difficulties. If I were you, however, I would not leave him alone for a time. To be unwilling to admit to these symptoms is a symptom itself."

Trowa had deeply hoped that Quatre was just stressed and depressive. The news that Quatre was actually sick tipped the scales towards Duo actually being dead. If Quatre was being poisoned – he knew what toxicological workups implied -- then Duo could have been too. If Duo had suffered from the same lack of yang, and been isolated, he might really have killed himself.

And by doing so, saved Quatre's life. Duo was a very good friend. 

"I will stay with him."

"Good. All right."

"Thank you very much for seeing him. He is everything to me," Trowa said, feeling exposed, yet daring and free at the same time. "Isn't he the most beautiful person in all the Earth Sphere?"

"Perhaps to you, and that is the way it should be," she said.

Trowa shivered, drawing his hand back from her, as she seemed done with the demonstration.

The doctor went on to show him acupressure points on the back of the neck, at the base of the spine, and other locations. She was demonstrating a few on the feet when Quatre emerged. He held the paper bag in one hand and in the other a small phone, and his eyes were red and damp. He made his way to Trowa, and leaned against him. 

"Aisha called. Apparently Duo left a note, and Heero gave it to a reporter. She sent it to me so that I wouldn't be caught unawares by reporters asking about it. And there are reports that the Preventers are looking for Heero. He's apparently missing. There's a photo of him from the morgue -- it doesn't look good, Trowa."

Heero gave Duo's note to reporters. Heero went to the morgue... and now he was missing. Heero came to a conclusion at the morgue and he acted on it. Trowa didn't want to see the photo, but he needed to. He needed to support Quatre. He needed to validate Duo. Alive or dead, he needed to respect him.

Trowa gave the doctor a polite but curt bow, and then wrapped his arm around Quatre's shoulders. "May I see?" he asked, hand out for the phone. "Dr. Tam, will you please have the prescriptions sent to our room?"

"Certainly," replied the doctor, who took the paper bag from Quatre's unresisting hands. At the door, she paused a moment. "Two things. First, congratulations. Second, Mister Maxwell had a good reputation on this colony. People said he was incorruptible. He will be missed badly."

She left.

Quatre handed over the phone, and wrapped himself around Trowa, again burying his face in Trowa's neck. On the screen were three tabs. The first was Quatre's e-mail, which contained an e-mail from Aisha with a subject line of "You need to see these" and an unsent draft from Quatre to Trowa's secured account with a subject line of "I'm sorry." The second was an image of Duo's suicide note. The third was a badly focused picture of Heero on his knees in a gray room, clutching something to his chest, with his head thrown back and mouth open in what looked like a scream.

Trowa's mouth went dry when he looked at the photo of Heero. Heero's conclusion was that Duo was dead. Heero wasn't always right, but Trowa's estimated probability that Duo was dead jumped to about 95. He scanned the suicide note and the probability that Duo was dead dropped back to maybe 85. That was not a suicide note. That was propaganda, even with a jab at Wufei. He knew Duo. He had a mental file on him that would have been inches thick if were on paper. Depressive Duo was silent, pensive, apologetic, and this letter was almost confrontational.

The draft email with the subject line 'I'm sorry' was scanned, noted, and considered stale data, but relevant to Quatre's depression.

Still holding Quatre, Trowa felt truly grateful to Aisha. "You should tell them we've married before they see it in the news. If they picked up this pic of Heero, Quatre, the media has to be watching the judicial wires. They'll have our marriage in the news in minutes."

Quatre was trembling against Trowa as he answered. "Heero thinks he's dead. I don't know what Heero will do. Would he kill someone? Or would he kill himself? He was so strange on the vidphone earlier..." Then Quatre took a deep breath. "First things first. You're right; I'll call them. Tell them they have to treat you like family now. Not that it will be that much of an improvement, I'm afraid. And I think we'll need to have a press conference, love, especially if we can't find Heero. I know you hate those."

Quatre took the phone back and hit a speed-dial number. "Aisha...? Good. Ah, I have some glad news... No, I don't know where he is, and you can tell the Preventers that as auxiliary agents reporting to Commander Une, Trowa and I will handle all questioning of Winner personnel and family members. ...If it makes you feel better, you can. He might hit you back, though... Listen, I just married Trowa. You need to know that. And Amihan needs to be kept away from the press... No, I don't think you're an idiot. He's taking the Winner name. I'll talk to Rae about scheduling a press conference, and have her send out a written statement... " 

His arm never lost the death-grip around Trowa's neck.

It was unpleasant hearing only half the conversation and the rise in Quatre's stress level was notable. Distantly, Trowa observed that his own stress was reaching the upper limits of his tolerance. He didn't think he'd 'switch' as long as Quatre was with him. Quatre would always be able to call him back to himself. He wasn't worried. Not at all.

"Aisha, we can argue about it later... Thank you. And I'll pass your congratulations on to him. Who's at the door? Oh, for... No, Agent Chang is expected. Yes, he's that Chang.

"Ah, excuse me? What? Wufei, did Aisha give you the phone? ...I'm not pleased to hear that. No, I don't know where he is... Yes, I'd tell you if I did. What? Ahhh... But... That's not... Well, frankly, we've been getting married. Yes! It did in fact seem to be the right time... I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, and you're going to congratulate us now."

Something that sounded suspiciously like an apology from Chang Wufei emerged from the phone.

"Thank you. We're very happy about it. You think he's going to kill Une? Why...? Oh. I suppose I can see that... Well, it's Heero and she should have known better..."

Something in Trowa stopped. He didn't care that Wufei didn't like the idea that they were getting married, that he had to be guilted into a congratulations. Heero was out there somewhere. Trowa didn't know what to do. Duo wouldn't have left them. Something very bad happened to Duo, was happening to Quatre. Quatre's voice sounded so distant, as if he were someone else altogether, someone very polite, slightly familar.

Trowa blinked slowly,then was gone.

Noname felt thin as dry ice fog, his mind a dark hole that nothing reached into. Noname felt nothing as he scrambled to sort out a strategy for saving everyone.

Quatre turned to stare at Noname, eyes wide. "Wufei, I need to go now. Wait for us there. And apologize to Aisha for grabbing the phone from her."

Quatre

Quatre snapped the phone closed, and let it fall to the floor. He needed both hands now, and wasn't going to waste the time to put it away. Quatre wanted to curse. Trowa had started to go rigid beside him even before Wufei had wrenched the phone away from Aisha, and his emotions now had that echoing hollowness to them that signaled Trowa was beginning to dissociate. They'd never gotten around to getting Trowa the food he needed, and both of them needed rest, he suspected.

And now... he wasn't feeling anything from Trowa at all now, and Trowa was no longer leaning in to his touch. Trowa was frozen, as though Quatre was a poisonous snake wrapped around him which Trowa wanted to throw off, but didn't dare touch.

Quatre told the headache to fuck off for the moment. If he could get Trowa back here, back with him, then it could come rushing back with all the vengeance it liked in a minute, and have him running to the bathroom again in agonized nausea if it damned will pleased. He just needed a moment where he could think!

It didn't listen, but that couldn't be allowed to be important.

"Trowa?" He kept his voice soft, without a trace of command or stress in it. "Trowa, can you hear me? Love? Think about who I am. Who you are. Trowa Winner? My new husband? My Fluffy Winner?"

He moved his hands slowly to Trowa's face, keeping them in Trowa's direct line of sight, attentive to any sign of a flinch or flashback. The headache throb was darkening the corners of his vision again, but he could see Trowa perfectly well, the center of his vision, the center of his world.

It wasn't really Trowa's voice that answered. It was colder, younger-sounding despite that, all logic and ruthless potential. "We should check messages. What if what is making you sick was making Duo sick? Trowa can't stand to lose you."

When Quatre's fingers touched Trowa's cheeks, gliding over a day's worth of stubble, Trowa blinked, eyes fluttering. When his eyes opened again, they were a clear emerald green, "I'm sorry, Quatre. I just -- I didn't think I was that tired. Tell me what you just said again, please?"

Quatre kept the same smile on his face, the same soft, regular stroking of Trowa's cheeks even as his thoughts raced. Trowa hadn't realized he'd dissociated. Trowa was already sufficiently overwhelmed. How to reduce the stress? The not-Trowa had offered a good suggestion. He'd follow through on it, and not let Trowa know he's dissociated. He didn't think Trowa would react well to the news, and he worried that Trowa would leave rather than risk having Quatre see his other selves.

As the Doctor Tam would have said: Good. All right.

"Nothing important, husband mine. Aisha -- and even Wufei -- offered their congratulations. Let's check the secure mail to see if Heero's sent us a message that way. He might have information we don't have, or at least let us know where he is." There were flashes of darkness on the periphery of his vision, replacing the slow encroaching darkness with flashing lights. Didn't matter. "I think I dropped my phone. Could you pick it up for me? Don't tell Heero, he'd be upset by the lapse in security, but I did set it up on the shuttle trip so I could check that account on my phone."

Then Quatre's phone began to ring, and the screen indicated the caller's identity was blocked.

Heero

Either Duo had taken them back to the Sweeper ship by a ludicrously convoluted route of service corridors and access tunnels -- which was a security measure Heero thoroughly approved of -- or Heero's earlier blind dash had taken him to the most ridiculously remote end point that a middling-sized colony could possess. Possibly both.

He couldn't say he minded having his body pressed to Duo's like this in the least, though he thought it would be more romantic if Duo wasn't supporting a significant share of his weight and providing most of the vertical stabilization. But he was the first to admit his understanding of 'romance' was rudimentary at best, and Duo seemed to be happy with the arrangement. It was strange, that he was making Duo happy. He'd realized intellectually on his journey here that Duo required the presence of some subset of supportive individuals around him, and that he was a possible member of the subset. An influential member, as both Duo and most of the other possible set members would usually obey his orders.

If he understood Duo correctly, though, he was more than that. He was necessary and possibly sufficient to create a greater level of happiness in Duo. It was a... mysterious thing. Frightening and inspiring. Perhaps it was akin to his own greater need to have Duo close by his side than the rest of his pack. Whatever it was, he hoped that Duo would still be of that opinion after spending a longer period of time in his company than had been possible during the war.

As they made their way through the Sweeper ship, he was pleased to note the double-takes that Duo's shorn and dyed hair induced in much of the crew. They were all pleased to see Duo, however, and Heero found that he wanted to snarl at several of them who seemed excessively pleased. He managed to refrain. It helped that Duo brushed them off as quickly as possible -- he seemed to be in a hurry to get to the medical bay.

In front of the medical station doors, Duo asked, "How are you, Heero? You're not still mad, are you?"

Heero grit his teeth. He would be damned if he'd make Duo carry him the last few feet "Mad?" Keeping up with Duo conversationally was difficult even when he wasn't so tired. Duo had often complained in the past that he did not make even an attempt, so he did his best to answer the question fully. "Do you mean mad as in mentally unstable? I am much more stable, knowing you are alive and knowing that I will be taking care of you. I admit to a continued level of concern about the other pilots, but I am unlikely at the moment to run off in another temporary loss of reason.

"Or do you mean angry? I am very angry at Une and your therapist at the moment. I will be taking action about that. I am irritated by people in the halls giving you lustful attentions, but not mad enough to take action."

"Nah, I meant.. are you angry at me still? And I think they were giving you lustful looks. You're pretty hot, Heero. I still can't quite believe you threw a gear over me like that, but Heero -- god, I need you. So don't you fight with the doc, just get well, okay?"

"Hn. No, I am not mad. I had failed to communicate to you the necessity of maintaining your well-being and providing me with regular status reports thereof. We have resolved the problem and you have given me your word." Duo still seemed to doubt his importance to Heero. Given their history, it was a reasonable doubt. Perhaps providing him with further information would assist. "Contact with you is also soothing. Healing, perhaps. I am beginning to feel better, although I will still seek medical evaluation."

Heero glared at the floor. "I am quite certain that you were the target of desire. Especially of that girl with the bright purple pigtails."

"I feel better being with you too, Heero." Duo smiled, then pressed the button to open the door to the med station. "Honey, I'm home," he called.

Home? Was the Sweepers medical center what Duo considered home? It was a more colorful, vibrant place than Duo's apartment had been. It had more -- was personality the word? He was so nervous about creating further miscommunication with Duo that he was reverting to the formal speech J had trained him in, and losing whatever grasp of slang he'd possessed. It was embarrassing.

"Duo! Oh my god, what did you do to your hair!?" the woman in the lab coat complained, then she saw Heero and her face went all business. "Known injuries?"

"Superficial contusions and abrasions, primarily in the extremities. No other wounds. Primary symptoms are fatigue, mildly-impaired cognition, irritability, and poor balance."

"Got it. I'm Doctor Kadowski, and I'll give you a looking over, if that's okay with you." She bustled around him, seemingly amused by his refusal to relinquish physical contact with Duo. He distracted himself from the unpleasant memories that medical equipment and the burning scent of antiseptic evoked in him by noting the jury-rigging on all of the equipment. The Sweepers had turned salvage into something like an aesthetic, and did their best to make every machine look patched-together and on the verge of falling apart -- though he doubted one could buy more reliable equipment new.

He was pretty sure some of the duct tape was purely there for show.

"And he wants to be deloused, don'cha Heero? Or you wanna get in touch with the office and let them know you're gonna give back that evidence and see a shrink?" The question seemed to remind him of an earlier thread of conversation, and Duo flinched slightly, and looked away as he asked, "Why are you angry at my therapist?"

Duo's flinch was like a slap to his face. Heero tried not to let his grip on Duo's hand tighten to the point of causing pain as he replied. "Yes, please remove any tracking chips. I will be speaking to Une, but if I remain working for her in any capacity, it will be under my terms. No chips. No secrets. No separations of my pa... the pilots. And if she cannot provide acceptable reasons for her actions with regards to you -- if I do not get a full disclosure of her intentions and full reparations --" Heero paused, suspecting it was inappropriate to utter death threats in the middle of the Sweeper's medical bay. He needed to obtain a better understanding of etiquette someday soon. "She will learn not to damage what is mine to protect. And I will not hand over your braid to her."

That flinch, refusing to meet his eyes... this reaction was wrong, not like his Duo at all, and he wanted to pull Duo behind him and snarl away anyone who approached until he was convinced Duo's self was no longer wounded.

Hn. That reaction could be approximated in a slightly more rational way. Pressing Duo to his side, he pulled his face down and rubbed their cheeks together. Encouraging Duo to rest his head on Heero's shoulder, Heero addressed the doctor.

"Please do a full toxicological workup on Duo as well, with particular attention to the psychoactives. Look for anything that would leave him more susceptible to suggestion or vulnerable to depression. A neurochemical workup might be wise as well..." He scowled. "A full physical is called for. He has not been eating properly and not sleeping well. He will need nutritional supplements."

Heero was breathing hard, trying to contain his rage at what had been done to his Duo. On the positive side, he wasn't having any of the sensory surges that he'd had for weeks now whenever he was angry. Probably because he was too exhausted – too drained.

He placed a kiss on Duo's neck to soften the words he was about to say. "No therapist should have tried to convince you that you were a danger to me and others. No therapist should have left you feeling unworthy. No responsible therapist would have let you go on dangerous missions in this state! And you should not be frightened by my criticism of him! You were never frightened of me!"

Duo

It was too much. The first thought that came to mind was, 'I died today, give me a break,' but it hadn't been today. It was at least a day ago and Heero was here and he knew just about everything that Duo had told his therapist and if Heero were angry at the man... Then the man had likely betrayed him in ways Duo couldn't get his mind around. With Heero holding him, a rush of emotions collapsed down on Duo and he wrapped both arms around Heero, face tucked against Heero's chest.

"Heero," Duo clenched his eyes shut. He wasn't going to cry. Nope. Not going to. "You think Quat and Trowa are gonna be real mad at me? I had to do it. I had to get somewhere where I could think."

Heero shook and took a deep breath before he spoke. "No. I talked to Quatre as soon as the news report came out. He was very worried. I told him to gather the rest of the pilots on L4 while I found out what had really happened here. May I let them know you are alive?"

"Yeah, meant to tell them. I'll see about giving them a call while you're getting looked at? Ahh... Doc's already got my blood cooking and all that junk. I wasn't taking anything though, just some anti-depressants that made me crazy. I'm not a drug addict, Heero. So, I'll be here. I'll use the Doc's computer. Okay?" His thoughts were starting to move faster; he had a better idea! "Oh, and Doc, I got an idea. We'll get Doc to make the call and make sure they're alone, then you can talk to them? I know, I'm kinda all over the place. Are you sure you're feeling okay? We can make the call first? Just to let them know? I don't want either of them to worry. I mean, which should we call first?"

Duo smiled, nervous energy making it hard to be still no matter how much he wanted to stay cuddled with Heero.

Heero let Duo talk until he wound down. When Duo stopped talking, he bracketed Duo's face with his hands. "Duo. They won't be angry for long, if at all. They are your friends and will be relieved to hear that you are alive. You are not the only one to suffer during our separation. I did not do well, and I've seen Quatre look better after 72 hours with no sleep and no food than he looked on the vidphone earlier. That is part of the reason I did not wish him to come to L2 with me. I wanted him home and safe, and Trowa and Wufei to go and look after him and one another.

"If Kadowski-sensei is willing to call Quatre, he comes closest to having adequate security on his phones. I do not trust Preventer security at the moment, so calling Wufei is out of the question." Another shaky deep breath, and Heero's grip tightened just a tiny bit more. "I do not share your conviction that the antidepressants were harmless. I could not find any samples in your apartment, or evidence that such a prescription ever existed. That makes me suspicious. Will you authorize your physician to discuss your health with me?"

"Yeah, well, I doubt Wu's stressing over my death. Probably just telling Une that he told her so, or something. And yeah, Doc can tell you anything you want to know about my health. The prescription is in my bunk here. I took them with me. Let's call Quatre now?" A tiredness crept around him, heavy on his shoulders and he laid a hand over Heero's, rubbing his cheek against Heero's palm. "If you do better with me, knowing that's such a wonderful feeling, Heero."

Kadowski had been quiet until now, respecting Duo's need to speak, as it were, but now she spoke up. "Okay, I'll make a call, and then we check out Mr. Yuy here. Duo's results are back on his blood work and other tissue tests. I haven't really had a chance to go through them yet, but he seems healthy. Given your concerns, I would like to replace the antidepressants with stock from our pharmacy and slowly start lowering the dosage."

Heero looked at Duo, and didn't speak. Duo was just... too tired to answer. After a few seconds of Duo failing to respond, Heero frowned, and started stroking Duo's cheek. "I don't mind if you're doing evaluations while I talk on the phone. I don't think the current prescription is doing much for Duo's depression. Perhaps you will consider another medication. And I would like you to look carefully at the test results when you can."

"I'll be happy to have a closer look at Duo's results, and I'll make an antidepressant recommendation based on that." Dr. Kadowski began poking and prodding and pinching.

Heero offered an arm for a cuff and finger clip, but kept the other hand against Duo's cheek. "I am thirsty. Can we remedy that?"

"I imagine you are thirsty! You seem to be quite dehydrated. Your hands are shaking, and I suspect --" There was a beeping from the finger clip, and she looked down at the display. "Make that I know that your blood sugar levels are totally crashing. I'm betting your electrolyte levels are wacky, too."

She instructed her assistant, a dark-skinned young man with a scarred face but a beautiful shy smile, to fetch several sports drinks for Heero and a nutritional supplement shake for Duo. There were a few moments of amusing bobble while Heero tried to figure out how to simultaneously drink, offer the Doc an arm, and continue to pet Duo.

Duo smiled, feeling a little better at Heero's obvious concern.

Doc Kadowski took a blood sample from Heero, "While we're waiting for the results, let me make your call. I'm going to be talking to Quatre Winner, right? The industrial tycoon? Are there codewords I should use?" She really seemed excited about the idea of codewords.

Duo grinned against Heero's hand, nuzzling for a moment, then turned that grin on the Doc. He knew it held maybe a touch of mania, but that had always been pretty normal for him. "Tell him the Atlantic is warm and Hell is frozen over, but say it with a straight face,"

Duo ran a hand through short blue-tinted hair and shivered at the sensation of short hair moving, of his hand against his scalp. The reference was to a long-ago day that Duo and Quatre had spent on a beach on the North Atlantic. That water was cold enough to make Duo think space might be warm. At least if you were out in space you wouldn't live long enough for your brain to fully register the cold. That day they'd both acted like reckless boys, running in and out of the surf, throwing sand, dancing around like there wasn't a war hanging over their heads. Quatre had confessed his love for Trowa, and Duo had hedgingly confessed his love for Heero. He thought the ocean, with the sun on it, was so beautiful, so blue, like Heero's eyes and just as cold.

He'd known, absolutely known, that Quatre would get Trowa. That was like saying Trowa was the tide and Quatre the sand, they were always touching somewhere, two interlocking pieces. Duo had said that the Atlantic would have to get warm and Hell freeze over before Heero would have anything to do with him. After all, he was Shinigami and a denizen of Hell, and Heero... Heero was the great blue sky, the vast spread of ocean, the entire fucking blue spinning world. What did Hell have to say to the beautiful Earth...? Well, Quatre had said stranger things had happened and maybe...

Maybe Duo was more like twilight to Heero's sky. Yeah.. Well... There must be a lot of unhappy whales because the Atlantic had gotten damn warm.

Duo's gesture was enough to fixate Heero's attention on his hair, and he stroked it absently as Duo gave Dr. Kadowski Quatre's private comm code. Duo leaned into Heero's touch, closing his eyes, and if he could have purred, he would have.

She punched it in with a grin like a kid in a candy shop. "Good afternoon. Is this Mister Winner? This is Doctor Kadowski, calling with some surprising test results..."

Staying out of the vidphone's camera kept the screen out of sight, but Duo heard the familiar polite tones. "Ah... I beg your pardon? I'm not familiar with..." Quatre's voice got colder, slightly hostile. "How did you get this number?"

Fainter, Trowa's baritone, clipped and terse. "Quatre?"

"No, no. At ease, soldier, this is perfectly legit. Are you in a suitably private environment?"

"You have 10 seconds to convince me I want to talk to you before I disconnect."

Quatre was angry. At the sound of his voice, so uncharacteristically tense, Duo began hedging his way behind Heero. Duo very much wanted Heero to move in front of the video feed so Heero could talk to Quatre and Duo could get a better assessment of how angry they were at him. At least they were on L4... Maybe the call was interrupting them or something.

"I've been reliably informed that the Atlantic is warm and Hell is frozen over."

One second... two seconds... three... And then, "Duo? Duo's ok? Is Heero there, too? I guess he'd have to be!"


	10. Chapter 10

Title: The Bone Gate  
Authors: Nix Winter and LunarGeography (Amy the Evitable)  
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Rating: Mature adults only  
Warnings: Angst, spooky occult stuff, and boys who are not what they seemed to be. Post EW  
Archive/3244342/1, http://www.gundam-wing-diaries . /gwsingleauthors.htm, all others please ask.  
Disclaimer: No infringement of the copyright of Gundam Wing is intended. This story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Summary: After Endless Waltz, the pilots are separated by the fears of the new government. But all is not well with the G-boys. Old enemies may be pulling strings from somewhere unimaginably far behind the scenes, and old friends may not be what they seem.

xxx: Thoughts

[xxx: Text on screen

Chapter 10

Trowa

Trowa took a deep breath and moved in closer behind Quatre. He didn't say anything, but the doctor and the med-bay behind her were very obviously Sweeper, which made sense. Trowa laid a hand on Quatre's back, just wanting the connection, waiting for the rest of the conversation to play out. They hadn't known what to make of the call from the stranger, half-afraid it was someone from the media.

"Please, is Duo well? Safe? Oh, yes, it's ok to talk. We're... Well, I don't know exactly where, but it's secure, ne, Trowa?" Quatre was vibrating with expectation, clutching at Trowa's hand.

Heero stepped forward into vid range. "He's alive."

"Oh, thank Allah. Where is he? Is he hurt? Is he with you? Can I talk to him?"

Trowa had to suppress a smile. Quatre wasn't giving Heero a chance to answer his frantic questions, but he wouldn't say anything that might interfere with the return of unfettered joy to his husband.

"Duo... He's not hurt but not entirely well. Une's been pulling his strings, threatening the rest of us to get him to see some..." Heero's face took on a look of cold fury. "...Some therapist, and her files indicate that she might have an underlying motive of which I would not approve. Of which none of us would approve. You two probably have tracking chips in you. Duo and I did. You'll want to have them removed."

A black rage spiraled up into Trowa like an impending tornado. He didn't think there had been an opportunity to put a chip in him, though he suspected Heero's information was good. "We did not all work for Preventers, though. At least I did not do much for them."

"Remember the physical exams we all had to take, even for auxiliary Preventer status?" Heero gave a grim nod as Trowa felt his fury become more solid.

Duo peeked his head out from behind Heero, blue bangs falling over his face. "I'm fine. I just wanted a change of environment, permanently. Hi, Quat. Hi, Trowa. Sorry I couldn't tell you. If you all knew what I was planning... well, I didn't want you to get in trouble if I got caught."

Trowa leaned towards the camera. "I knew you weren't dead." He almost promised to kick Duo's ass too, but something about his friend looked fragile. He tried for a lighter topic, to assuage the fear lurking around violet eyes. "Your hair is blue. Were you thinking about joining the circus?"

In a rare breach of manners, Quatre interrupted. "Duo! I'm so glad you're alive! I was so worried, I didn't think you'd do something like that, but... Please don't ever scare us like that again!" He smiled up at Trowa. "My husband really was sure you hadn't really killed yourself, though."

Heero blinked. "Husband?" He seemed to ponder a moment. "That's good. But I thought L4 didn't recognize same-sex marriages."

"L2 is more comfortable," Trowa said, smiling. "I've changed my name. I'm Fluffy Winner now. We would have waited for you, but there was a sense of urgency."

"Fluffy?" Heero's look of bafflement would have been amusing in other circumstances. But Quatre was so pale, and he was gradually letting Trowa support more of his weight as they stood talking on the phone. Trowa just couldn't feel amused right now.

"Quatre gave me the name," Trowa smiled, but the conclusions he was reaching kept the smile from being genuine. Duo was behaving very oddly and it didn't take much to draw a line between Duo's strange behavior and Quatre's similarly strange behavior.

Duo held onto Heero's shirt; it was a child-like gesture. "I'm glad you guys got married. You guys should be happy... I'm sorry, Quatre. I didn't think it would worry you all that much. You weren't very upset were you? I mean, I didn't mean to upset you. I just, I just was, it was like I was getting headaches and I couldn't think and I ... I don't know... I just, uh," Duo said, shrinking just a little bit farther behind Heero. "I didn't mean to hurt you, ever."

As Duo spoke, Trowa noted Heero's hands clenching and unclenching until Heero reached around to pull Duo close to him. He tucked Duo's head under his chin and stroked the short hair and trembling back. Duo still was trying to hide from the camera – which gave Trowa more fuel for his fire -- so Heero ended up with his back to the vidphone, Duo held close to his chest, and had to crane his neck in order to watch Trowa as he spoke.

Trowa scowled. "Duo. Who hurt you like this? Heero? We need to talk. If there was a purpose behind this, it's not likely to stop just because Duo broke away."

"Agreed. We need to gather, along with Wufei. Is he on L2, as well? There are files of Une you should look through. They are on my --" Trowa was treated to the unique sight of Heero's jaw dropping open in shock. " -- My laptop. Which I left in the morgue."

Quatre took advantage of the shocked silence. "Duo -- of course I was upset. You're my dear friend! I don't want to lose you. You have headaches, too?"

Heero jerked his head to stare directly the camera at those words. "Quatre has had headaches? Barton -- I mean, Winner -- Fluffy? -- we need to centralize, and establish security. Pool data. And remind people that they should not tamper with my pack."

There was a low rumbling growl spilling out of Heero's chest, and Trowa thoroughly approved of the sentiment. Even if it had only been Duo that was targeted, redress had to be made. And since it damn well seemed to involve Quatre as well... Trowa found himself wanting to growl as well. "Where are you? If we join you they will track you through us. We must have the tracking chips removed."

At Trowa's tone, Duo finally moved around to face the vid camera with a look of distress on his face. "Trowa, I really didn't mean to upset you and Quatre. Q... you don't look good. I didn't mean to do that to you. I'm so sorry!" Tears filled Duo's eyes. "I missed you both so much!"

"Oh, no, Duo, it's not your fault! I've just not been feeling well, that's all. And by doing what you did, you brought us back together, so I'm not angry! Just worried, and had a bad scare, that's all." Duo's tears seemed to trouble Quatre deeply – Trowa's husband was starting to shake, and little lines of stress or pain were appearing at the corners of his eyes and between his eyebrows. It was extremely out of character for Quatre not to be offering an analysis of the situation, or suggesting plans. Extremely so.

"I'm so glad you're not mad at me, Q. You got married? I can't believe you got married! That's so wonderful! We should have a party!" Duo paused. "I don't know if I should go out though. I mean, I went out to get Heero and no one recognized me. Maybe I'm just tired. I can't think real well. Heero? Do you think Quatre's place would be safe?"

Trowa suspected the cold in Heero's eyes was a match to his own. Trowa knew Heero would be doing his own comparison of Quatre and Duo's symptoms, and not liking the result. "We are currently on a Sweeper ship at the port. They were able to somehow scramble my signal until they excised the chip. I don't know if the same trick will work twice, but it does not require a full medical facility to locate and remove the chips. We can change locations, but we will need rest soon.

"Can you have your chips removed at your current location, Trowa? It would be best to leave them functional and leave them somewhere you would be expected to gather. A Winner property, maybe. Wufei should do the same. We may wish to leave this ship as our safehouse." Heero scowled. "Can you assure the security of a local Winner property? Once you have confirmed that it is secure, Duo and I can join you. We can take precautions to prevent being recognized."

"Maybe you guys could come here?" Duo offered the suggestion diffidently. "The ship is secure. Maybe you guys should come here? I don't know what would be safe anymore. I had it all planned out, but I was only thinking about logistics for just myself."

Trowa did not like seeing Duo so skittish. It was the same type of self-doubt and timidity that was in Quatre now. He was going to kill someone over this. He had several ideas about how to make the deaths painful and prolonged. "We will get our chips removed here. If Quatre is agreeable, we'll find secure means to join you. We'll leave the chips - there is no reason for anyone not to believe that Quatre and I would stay here for an extended period. I have not heard from Wufei yet. I am unsure of his loyalties. Quatre, what is your opinion?"

"I think we need to talk to Wufei. I admit, he's more closely tied to Une and therefore the Preventers as an organization than we are, but... He is one of us." Quatre gave a little shrug, and Trowa noticed how his thin shoulders shook as he did so, and how his pallor was worsening. "He was difficult on the phone just now, but he sounded upset, almost panicked. Earlier when I spoke to him, he was genuinely grieving over Duo, and was fully aware of what he owed the rest of us. He said he had information we ought to have."

Heero nodded. "There's a great deal I want to know about Une and what she is up to. I also want to talk to Wufei. If you doubt him, Trowa, why don't you and Quatre ask him to deliver my laptop to you? That would be a small test of his loyalties and give you a chance to evaluate him in person before you reveal any information about Duo. Once you have the chips removed, I have no difficulty with making this location the center of our operations, if Howard is agreeable. But we need to go. I am seeking information on Duo's health, and there may be an update available."

Trowa thought the data must have been secure or available from another source if Heero were willing to trust possibly compromised hands with it – or perhaps Heero was absolutely certain of the security on his laptop. He was still in shock that Heero had left the computer behind. "I will request that of him. We will all rest, then confirm plans before changing locations?"

"Agreed." Heero's nod was crisp. "Watch one another's backs. I am... uneasy."

Heero

Heero ended the phone conversation, and rapidly downed another bottle of sport drink while he processed his reactions. The conversation with Trowa and Quatre had been enlightening, worrying, and reassuring in almost equal measure. Quatre had looked terrible. Skinny and pale, with lips that were nearly colorless. Trowa was doing the balancing for both of them. Quatre had been quiet, rarely speaking except to reassure Duo, and had offered few suggestion on how to proceed.

Duo wasn't as physically ill as Quatre appeared, but the similarities in both of their behavioral changes were striking. Striking and ominous.

Trowa had looked stressed, but well. Err.. Fluffy. He'd been under the impression that people only changed last names when they were married. He suspected he had been misinformed.

Seeing them eased another heavy weight from his shoulders. It wouldn't be lifted until they were with him in person, to touch and smell and evaluate properly, but they were together and not dead. This was good. It was only Wufei whose status was completely unverified now, and Quatre had indicated they'd been in communication.

Heero turned to Doctor Kadowski, keeping an arm around Duo's waist. "Thank you for waiting. Do you have results?"

She referenced the papers in front of her, shuffling them without really looking at them, apparently nervous under the intensity of Heero's gaze. "You, Heero, appear to have just run a marathon or two, after fasting for a week or so. Not only had your blood sugar crashed, your body was on the verge of beginning to break down muscle tissue for protein. This usually only occurs after prolonged starvation, but your HbA1C shows no such problem -- your blood sugars have averaged perfectly normal for the last 3 months. You electrolyte levels were indeed off, and you've accumulated fatigue poisons like nobody's business.

"I suspect that with rest, food, and plentiful hydration, you'll be fine. I'm surprised that you've bounced back as far as you have with only a bit of rehydration. But there were other oddities in your metabolism that match with with Duo's told me about the alterations performed on you... " She shook her head, catching herself. "I would appreciate it if you could come in for a second check up before you go in case I'm wrong. Which I could be, as you are entirely anomalous and I have no baseline to reference."

Heero scowled. He truly did not enjoy being in a medical setting. But it took only one look at Duo to convince him to acquiesce. "Agreed. Any further news on Duo's condition?"

"Ahhh... At your suggestion, I took a closer look. His neurotransmitter levels are off, but I expected that given his report of depression and treatment... but they're not off in a way completely consistent with an episode of MDD, and the results are not quite what I'd expect from the meds he was prescribed. Nothing strange enough to set off any flags, just a series of small anomalies. And his toxicology results was the same. I'd like to analyze the pills Duo's been taking."

Duo was now crushed to his chest, wrapped in both of Heero's arms, and Heeo was glaring. He wasn't quite sure when his body had done these things, and he tried not to snarl at the Doctor. She wasn't the threat, he reminded his instincts. "I will give you a sample. Duo, where are your pills?"

Duo straightened in his embrace. "Don't give my stuff away, Heero! My pills are in my bunk and I will give you some, Doc. Maybe we can replace them or I can just stop taking any. I didn't like the headaches they were giving me anyway." Duo smiled up at Heero then, taking away some of the sting of his chiding words, as well as a considerable fraction of Heero's cognitive capacity. Duo had the best smiles.

Heero knew Duo didn't like it when he was autocratic – but there were some things he would not compromise on. "It is your choice to take replacements or not. But I do not want you taking any pills those people gave to you any longer."

Duo nodded. Despite the moment of annoyance, Duo was apparently very happy to be pressed up against him, and Heero was finding this extremely distracting. He had an erection to match Duo's and a rapidly shredding binding of self-control. One part of his head told him that he should be infuriated by this rebellious sexual desire, but it had no teeth.

"Duo, can we eat in your room?" He finished another sports drink in a long series of gulps, and he took the protein bar Doctor Kadowski's assistant was offering, and made quick work of it. The dizziness and fatigue were almost entirely alleviated. "Can we go there?"

Duo offered a smile -- bright, open, topped with violet eyes full of love. "Yeah, we can eat in the room," Duo wiggled a brown eyebrow. "We were having a conversation, if I remember. Important conversation."

"Oh, boys in love," Doc said. "Go. I'll have someone send up some food, so, uh, keep your pants on." She gave them both a grin worthy of any Sweeper kin.

Heero was blushing. Or flushing. Whichever was more appropriate to being teased by his Duo, with that utterly open look in his eyes. Heero hoped his own eyes were even a quarter as expressive as Duo's. He doubted it. All his eyes had ever effectively expressed, so far as he knew, was anger.

As they were exiting the door, the Doctor called out, "And Duo -- I expect you to drink the supplement I'm sending down. I want to get your weight back up."

Heero resolved to see that he did. Several options for rewarding compliance came to mind, and his face felt even warmer.

"My weight is fine. All muscle," Duo said. "I didn't lose that much weight... just a bit of fat I put on while living the cushy life of a Preventer with an apartment to go home to. Heero, come on. I bet we could get a hold of a bathing room for a while too. Hot bath?"

The bath would give him an opportunity to evaluate that statement, Heero decided. And to further enjoy evaluating Duo...

He nodded. He hoped all of his staring wasn't bothering Duo.

"Yeah, and I can prove that the carpet doesn't match the drapes." Duo wiggled his eyebrows and moved to take Heero's hand, to draw Heero along, moving down the unmarked corridors with easy familiarity "We have big tubs on this ship too. I spend a lot of time on this ship, like before, before the war."

Heero followed. "Is this where you were trained to pilot?"

It was very different than J's laboratories had been. People here smiled, and chatted, and wore colorful and sometimes impractical clothing and hairstyles. People had probably smiled and chatted somewhere in J's labs, but never in front of J and rarely in front of his pupil. They had not much liked Heero, and Heero had not much liked anyone or anything at all. But here... Duo seemed to have been given a variety of nicknames, and all of them, even the ones that sounded derogatory, were said with affection. And people seemed to want to touch Duo -- to hug him, or gently hit his arm, or just squeeze his hand.

Heero could understand that. It made sense that everyone would want to touch Duo. He was beautiful and magnetic and did not frighten people away most of the time. He didn't mind the patting or the hand-holding so much, although he found himself moving closer to Duo when these things happened, as if to reaffirm his connection. But he did not like watching Duo hug people. When Duo hugged others, he let go of Heero. When Duo hugged others, he was encircled by somebody else's arms, and they might sweep him away, out of Heero's sight.

No, he didn't like that at all. But Duo liked hugging people. Heero thought it would be a great sacrifice to ask Duo to stop hugging people, and saw no good reason why Duo would agree to do so.

Heero wasn't entirely left out of the welcome, though. The feeling seemed to be that Duo was family and Duo had brought Heero... so Heero was family too, even if he were a little intimidating. Smiles were directed warmly toward Heero as well, although no one but Duo seemed to want to touch him. In Heero's opinion, this was just as well. He didn't like strangers touching him.

As he followed Duo, his eyes were repeatedly drawn to the rounded ass (the cheeks fit in his hands as though they'd been engineered), to the paired arcs where neck became shoulder (the skin there felt like peaches, fuzzy and smooth at the same time), and the tiny shadowed hollow at the top of Duo's neck, right before the hair began to spill down (Had anyone ever seen this part of Duo before? Heero wanted to claim that hollow as his alone, and explore the contour with his lips and tongue.)

It made it extremely difficult to maintain alert awareness of his surroundings.

The bathing room was a unexpectedly large, sparkling clean, and improbably contained a small inset waterfall. Shampoos and other bathing finery was set around. For a room on a ship, it was luxurious – almost decadent -- but Heero knew Sweepers spent a lot of time in space, and would see no reason to be deprived of home comforts. Perhaps this place contributed to morale. Perhaps it had been constructed as an engineering challenge – a waterfall in a ship's erratic artificial gravity! In any case, the room was warm and humid, and felt safe. It was nothing like any of J's space facilities.

Duo closed the door and smiled at Heero. "We're safe here, Heero. As safe as anywhere in the Earthspere. Now we can talk, talk about what ... about, god damn, you had a tail! Are you sure you're okay?"

"A little tired, still, but I am much better after having had those sports drinks. Not shaky anymore."

There was no immediate reply. The expression on Duo's face indicated that he'd been asking for more than an update on Heero's physical status. Unfortunately, he really didn't have much information.

"J said to me more than once that I wasn't entirely human. That was the reason he selected me to be a pilot. I had a different metabolism. I was stronger, even before he started tampering, and I healed faster than normal." This was uncomfortable for him. He wasn't ashamed of his differences -- he'd never have survived half of what he'd survived without them -- but he'd never wanted to talk about them. If other people knew, they might be curious, like J, and look at him as a puzzle or a project. He hadn't liked that, and now that the colonies were safe and peace was established, he saw no reason to endure any more of that treatment. "J did some theorizing about where the differences might have come from, but his focus was on finding them and making use of them. Not explaining them. When I was younger, and was upset or angry, I would grow claws. I cannot remember ever having the tail before, or the ears.

"I remember J complaining frequently when I was very young about oddities in my behavior -- in how I tried to interact with people. He tried to modify the behaviors through training. I do not remember much of that. Eventually he chemically suppressed them. He was pleased with the results. Apparently the chemical regime suppressed many behaviors he found counter-productive in a soldier."

Damnit, he'd returned to speaking in a flat monotone, and he knew Duo did not like it when he spoke like that. He wanted Duo happy with him, so Duo would take off his clothes, and they could touch again. He stripped off his own shirt, hoping Duo would do the same.

Duo obliged. Heero stared at the pale chest that was revealed to him, captivated by the pink points of Duo's nipples, by the dark hollow of his navel. And bracketing it were the faintest shadows where Duo's hipbones protruded slightly, and he wanted to follow those twin curves down, so see where they met, where Duo's cock would be standing. He should be evaluating Duo's condition, to see if Duo's claims about his weight loss were true. He should be searching for the scars from Duo's self-inflicted injuries, so he could detect any additions. But for all that he was captivated by single features upon Duo's body, he couldn't manage anything like a clinical appraisal. There was just the sensual whole that was Duo.

Wufei

He chose to accompany Une to the Preventer branch office before he went to the Winner suites. He wasn't at all certain that he'd received all the relevant information from the vidphone briefing en route, and cherished a hope that they'd found something new. Preferably Yuy's location, rather than a trail of bodies he might have left behind him.

It was the right choice to make, because he was able to stop the IT department from trying to hack Heero's laptop. Which Heero had left behind at the morgue.

He rubbed his temples. Winner had been right. Leaving Heero alone here to do whatever investigating and...

He sighed and faced up to the situation like a man. Leaving Heero alone to investigate and carry whatever retaliation he felt necessary would have been dishonorable. Leaving Winner and Barton to contain Yuy would have been an act of cowardice.

He held the silver case gingerly, not putting it entirely beyond Heero to have equipped his favorite piece of technology with a self-destruct of some sort. The idiots had been trying to crack the first layer of protection with a password-bypassing program designed by Yuy himself. He'd explained the folly of this action to them in very small but pointed words. At length.

Just in case they hadn't taken his point, he'd taken the laptop with him. Yuy would want it back, and he didn't want to see Preventers L2 HQ blown up by a hacker's misstep.

Not quite. Not yet.

By the time he'd returned to the conference room that had been converted into Une's office, she'd finished speaking with the L2 top brass, and was sitting alone at the desk. Ready to tell her that he was going to have the chip removed whether she and Senate approved or not, he was caught by a sense of wrongness before the first word was uttered. She had her back to the door – What was she thinking? -- and her posture was rigid. On the desk in front of her was a vase of flowers; roses, it looked like, dark red ones.

That was odd. The Preventers were not the sort of organization that would waste money on decorating, and even if some idiot thought the arrival of the Commander justified an attempt to make the building more attractive, roses were far too extravagant. They sent the wrong sort of message Was one of the local agents attempting to court Une? Perhaps to avoid a reprimand for the bumbling at the scene of Maxwell's...? If so, he hadn't done his homework, because there was no way the roses wouldn't remind her of Khushrenada.

Frankly, they didn't make him terribly comfortable either, and it didn't help that Une had yet to acknowledge him hovering in the doorway. He entered, closing the door behind him, feeling an unpleasant sense of deja vu.

"Commander?"

He was ignored, again. She was staring fixedly at the roses, hands clenched into fists on the table in front of her. Her breathing was fast and shallow. The cloying scent of the flowers was filling the room, and Wufei felt his stomach twist in nausea. The last time he'd smelled that scent, there had been the clash of blades and the burning humiliation of having his life spared, of being found unworthy of an honorable death.

"Commander!" He didn't know what memories held her trapped or where in time she was lost, but they could not afford to have her break again as she had on Earth.

He couldn't afford it.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. How long had it been since he touched another person outside of a sparring match? Or an emergency? It was a ridiculous question to have sprung to mind, and furious, he banished it from his head. This was an emergency, of sorts, and that was the only reason he was touching Une. Touching the Commander.

A long moment, and her eyes moved to focus on him. Her lips shaped the word 'Chang,' but there was no breath behind it to give sound to his name.

Then she inhaled, a pained gasping noise, and she curled in on herself, chin to her chest, and her hands pressing between her breasts. The motion reminded of him of Winner's attacks, when his space heart caused him pain, and he recalled how Barton had touched Quatre, looked him in the eye and spoken softly, grounding him.

The laptop hit the cheap carpeting with a dull thud as he reached with both hands to lift Une's face, to direct her eyes to him. His fingers brushed her cheeks as she straightened of her own accord, and an inexplicable, horrifying sense of wrongness held him frozen. It was a moment out of his nightmares, and he was certain that in a moment the person before him would cease to be Une, and that the face that was tilting up to view him would be Treize's.

So certain he was of the impending transformation that when the eyes that met his were brown, Une's rich brown, it jarred him out of his paralysis. With a cry – certainly not a shriek, just a noise of startlement, that was all – he jerked backwards, hitting the wall behind him.

"Did I scare you, Wufei?"

His voice was still lost in the nightmare-terror. It's Une, he told himself. Just Une. Just Une. Just Une.

"I must apologize." The posture of the woman in the chair was perfect, the military exactitude he associated with Une. But she was resting her elbows on the chair arms, and steepling her hands before her face in a gesture he'd never seen her use before. "I was distracted when you entered, a most unforgivable lapse. The situation before us – well, let us say it was handled without the proper degree of elegance."

It was Une before him. But the smile, full of amused superiority, that wasn't Une's. The tilt of the head, that wasn't Une's. The smooth-toned sensual speech containing too many unnecessary words, that wasn't Une's either. It was madness to think so, foolishness, but all these things belonged one someone else's face. Was he dreaming? Was this all one of his nightmares?

He wanted to wake up.

"You pilots deserve better than Maxwell's end. That was not a fitting death for a warrior, much less one of the greatest warriors of our time."

He forced his knees to take his weight, pushed away from the wall. He was not going to allow this unreasoning fear, this ridiculous nightmare-inspired delusion, to unman him. He was Chang Wufei, and he could manage his Commander's shifts in personae. He had thought she was cured of them, but he had apparently thought wrong. He needed to consult with someone, to determine if he was overreacting to a small shift in behavior, probably brought on by the recent tragedy. Yes. He needed to consult with Yuy, Barton, and Winner, and they would assure him he was overreacting.

Yuy. Laptop. Check.

He bent down to pick it up.

"I will see to it that appropriate action is taken, Wufei. I regret what has happened, most deeply. Rest assured that I will look into the situation and make remedy. Gather with your fellow pilots, my friend, and give Maxwell a send-off appropriate to a fallen warrior."

"Ah... Yes. Yes, I'll do that, Commander."

Right. Go to Winner's suite. They would find Yuy, and he'd realize this was all a delusion brought on by stress. He overrode the instinct to back out of the room, but couldn't find it in himself to offer his back to the Commander, so he ended up exiting the room with an awkward sideways shuffle. He closed the door behind him with a sense of relief that did not befit a son of the Dragon Clan.

On his way out, he asked the guard at the post about the roses.

"Oh, no, no, we don't have that sort of thing around. Are you crazy? We don't have the budget for reliable phones, forget flowers. Crighton said some guy delivered them earlier, for the Commander. Didn't say who they were from. She got a boyfriend back on Earth or something?"

Wufei informed the man that the Commander's personal life was not either of their business. He asked what florist had provided the roses.

"Dunno. Wasn't my shift. The guy would have signed in, if you want to check to log."

Wufei scanned the data pad. There were multiple deliveries that arrived earlier that morning – office supply stores, inter-colony package delivery, data courier services – but no deliveries from any florists. He scanned the list of individuals who had logged in – there were many, and most of them had indicated a particular agent with whom they had an appointment. There was only one name that had no company or appointment associated with it, and Wufei took note of it – Peter Cromwell.

The name seemed familiar, somehow.

Duo

A bath! Duo grinned. He'd been just slightly worried, for no reason that he could really pin down. At least Quatre and Trowa didn't hate him for what he'd done. And Heero! Duo almost felt like he was in a dream. Heero was being so nice. He almost felt as if it couldn't be real. He'd rested though, just gotten up a few hours before he had gone to find Heero. Duo really needed some time to think, but he didn't want to be alone to do it.

Heero was talking so much, talking about his past, and Heero never talked about any of this stuff before. It was amazing, but he could hear and see how difficult it was for Heero to do this – he was getting stiff -- not in a good way! -- and talking in that robotic monotone.

"I love you, Heero," Duo said, wanting to bring Heero back to the warmth and away from the programming. "I think you're so beautiful, like this now, and in the other form too." Duo moved close, kissing Heero's shoulder, then down toward a nipple. "I love you so very much." Duo shivered. "I've never wanted anyone like I've always wanted you. You've got such beautiful eyes and I always felt like you were the only who would really understand me."

"I don't understand you at all. I am trying, though."

Duo could feel Heero's heart pounding beneath his lips. Heero brushed a quick kiss against his neck. Duo was fairly sure his neck was the most sensitive part of his body. Duo's moans were soft though, fluttering, hushed by instinct, even though this room was soundproofed and made for intimacy as well a bathing.

Heero's voice was equally quiet. "Would you take off the rest of your clothes? I... I would like to look."

"Okay," Duo whispered, shifting his pants off, nervously brushing the bits of hair back which had found their way to his face. He didn't have anything on under his jeans and he'd pushed his shoes off as soon as he was through the door of the bathing room. He blushed, shy and self-conscious. "You want to look because you... uh, like to look, or because you want to take inventory of me? Heero, I'm not so head bent as to actually do myself any kind of long lasting harm. You've got more self inflicted scars than I do. You trust me, still, right?"

"I trust you. I am worried still. I should be..." Heero swallowed hard. "Should be evaluating your status, but I cannot. You are too... I cannot see you as something to evaluate. I can only see you as someone I want to look at. Want to touch. Someone amazing. I..."

Heero fumbled his own pants off, removing his briefs with them. He left them on the floor, and stepped toward Duo, resting his hands lightly against Duo's sides. Sliding them down, gently, cautiously, he brought them down and forward to stroke the jutting hipbones, and let his palms slide down, stopping just shy of the short chestnut curls. "Can I?"

"Yeah," Duo whispered, "I'd like that."

Sex felt different this time. It wasn't as if he'd never had sex, but this time, here with Heero...

Duo laid a hand on Heero's bare belly. "So who do you think will be top this time?" Duo grinned. It was said as a joke, a slight challenge, and brought light into violet eyes. The mood and intensity from the tunnels was back, no hesitation, no being self conscious.

Heero

The moment permission was granted, Heero's trembling fingers brushed up the length of Duo's shaft, with an unintentionally teasing flick at the head as his hand shook and slipped. Then he pulled up with a loose grasp, and his curious thumb ran over the slit, spreading dampness over the head. Heero felt hyperattuned to Duo's response, hanging on every twitch, every hitch of breath, wanting desperately to please Duo, to bring him to moans and writhing and desperation for the feel of Heero's skin against him.

"Top?" It took a moment for Heero's sensation-addled brain to process the word, but a cascade of information he'd been provided with crashed into his mind. J had made sure his Perfect Soldier knew what kind of damage to expect during torture, including sexual assault. It was so easy to cause pain, even possibly fatal damage, anally penetrating someone. Could he risk doing that to Duo? No... but...

At the same time, his hips wanted to thrust, and thrust into Duo, and the back of Heeros brain, where ancient reflexes lived, demanded to feel Duo beneath him, moaning at a welcome invasion; to feel hotwettight around his cock; to push his way deep inside of Duo; to fill him with come, joining the neck mark he'd made earlier with ineradicable scent inside Duo, to finish his claim.

Words. He needed words. "Won't hurt you. Won't."

"Damn straight," Duo said, moving closer, a hand sliding around to cup Heero's ass. "Heero, I like being bottom. I think it feels good and I'd really love to have you moving inside me." Then, as if his mind were just clicking, "Has anyone hurt you that way, Heero?"

Warm. Firm. Duo's hand was on his ass, and somehow that touch was making his cock throb unbearably. Duo's cock was in his hand, and he was stroking it, hot suede shaft and slick tip, when Duo moved closer, causing him to give it a firmer, faster pump. Duo liked being bottom and wanted to have Heero's body slide deep inside his own, wanted to be impaled on Heero's cock, and oh, gods, he wanted...

One hand let go of Duo's cock, abandoning the exploration in favor of pulling Duo all the way against him, chest to chest, a thigh slipping between Duo's legs, and he'd never realized how much skin Duo had, and how desperately he wanted it against his own skin. He knew he should answer Duo's question, but he needed to nuzzle at the ear and neck, and suckle again at the mark he'd left on Duo's shoulder.

"Bite me again. Oh, Heero! Not as hard as that time, but just nibble me, Oh, wow, yeah, come on, Heero," Duo panted, "We need oil. By the bath, and there's towels, we can, ohhhhhh, ahhhhhhh!" There was a moment of nothing but panting, then: "Lay one on the, aaahhhh, ground!"

Perfect. Those gasps and catches of breath, they were perfect. The flower-petal texture of the neck beneath his tongue and lips, it was perfect. The rich scent of Duo's arousal, rising from between their bodies, it was perfect, too.

A nip, then a tracing of tongue, and a harder nip, and it made Duo jump a little in his arms. He ran fingertips down from the nape of Duo's neck, slowly, between the shoulder blades, down the small of Duo's back, feeling the raised lines of scars, memorizing the geography of his lover. His love.

Tentative, he explored further, between those firm cheeks that he wanted to massage and knead... but now he was touching the valley between them, caressing the hidden skin surrounding Duo's entrance.

Oil, Duo had said. And towels. He wasn't going to hurt Duo.

His hips thrust forward, almost of their own accord, and his cock rubbed against Duo's and against the thick curls surrounding it. Arm around Duo's waist, he guided them both toward the water, toward the stack of towels. Toward the oil.

"No, never been hurt that way." He had to pause, to pant, as the dripping head of his cock slid so slickly against Duo's belly. "You? Don't want to hurt you."

Duo shivered in Heero's arms."You wouldn't hurt me, Heero. I promise." Duo pulled a little away, winking, his hand lingering over Heero's cock as he fairly danced towards a stack of towels and waterproof yoga-style pads. It was seconds only as he threw one on the ground and a towel over it. He grabbed a bottle of oil and dropped to his knees. "Let me take you in my mouth? Kiss you here," Duo asked, fingers reaching for Heero's cock.

Knees failed at the question, and without the slightest hint of grace, Heero fell, landing on his hands and knees.

"Please," he heard himself whisper, his mouth suddenly dry. "Please." He dipped forward to bestow his own kiss on Duo's cock, and found himself licking the salty liquid off the tip as though it were candy coating. He sat back on his knees -- would this work for what Duo wanted? Was he allowed to touch Duo while Duo did... what Duo was going to do?

"Please, Duo. I want to feel you."

"Touch me, Heero, any way you want to. Anywhere," Duo said, voice warm against Heero's belly as he said anywhere. The tip of Duo's tongue trailed down over Heero's belly, and he blew in Heero's curls. Then Duo went back to gentle, loving tongue-caresses along the vein of Heero's shaft, swirling his tongue around the head.

The muscles in Heero's belly rippled with each caress, each breath of air. He remembered what Duo had said earlier, and placing one hand behind him to brace him, ran the other through that short, blue hair, making sure to touch Duo's sensitive nape.

When Duo's mouth began the slow slide down his cock he sucked in a lungful of air, ragged and noisy. He tried to moan out his appreciation, remembering the fire that had run from his belly to his groin at the noises Duo had been making. Instead of those melted chocolate sounds, his noises seemed to have to claw their way out of his throat, and emerged short and sharp and guttural.

Duo held Heero at the back of his throat, suckling, stroking, and then he pulled back. "I love the sounds you make, Heero. Love the honesty of them, the uniqueness of them. Tell me how you want to do this? Do you want to lay down and I'll slide on to you? How would it be perfect for you?"

How could Duo be so coherent, so fluent, when he was unraveling into nothing more than a need to thrust, to stroke, to taste and hear and smell?

"You... are perfect. Don't leave." He couldn't get any more words out, not when Duo was his at last. So instead he reached for the bottle of oil, poured a splash into his palm, and crawled behind Duo. He took a moment to nip at Duo's ass, then to suckle, pulling a deep burgundy mark to the surface, then poured the oil from his hand down Duo's crevice, then pulled the cheeks apart. Heero stroked down the hidden ravine -- almost hairless, gleaming with oil -- until he was caressing Duo's heavy balls,and then pressed his way back up. Running his finger around the edge of Duo's entrance, he awaited a response to his inquisitive touch.

Duo leaned forward, looking over his shoulder. "Never leave you," Duo moaned, wiggling his ass, slowly, inviting, "Oh yes, Heero, I want it, please. It'll be hot, feel good." Duo arched his back. "I love you! Oh, I want you! Heero! Please! Hold me while you take me, tell me you love me and you'll never change your mind?"

Checking that his forefinger was still slick, Heero pressed it inside of Duo. He could feel Duo relaxing, allowing him entrance. Willing. Opening. Yielding.

Heero shuddered at the thought, at the sight of his finger penetrating Duo's ass. Duo was sauna-hot inside, impossibly smooth and slick from the oil. He slid it in and out -- Duo didn't seem to be in any pain. The opposite, maybe. But Heero's cock was much thicker than one finger...

He slid two fingers in. "I'll hold you." His own voice was unrecognizable to Heero, it was so low. "I'll keep you by my side. My pack. My lover. Won't let anyone take you." His fingers encountered a nub inside of Duo, and he rubbed over it.

Duo went to his elbows. "Please, take me? I'm ready for you, I want to hear you making those sounds again, feel your arms around me. I want you to pound me till I cum! Please, Heero, Please?"

Sliding his fingers out, Heero took another palmful of oil, slid it over his cock. Holding himself at the base, stroking Duo's ass with the other hand, he rubbed his cock-head against Duo's pucker. Would it really fit?

He pressed forward, felt the flutter around his tip as Duo relaxed for him. There was still resistance, and he had to hold his cock in alignment until the broad head popped in. He caught his hips as they tried to jerk forward, to slide in and impale Duo completely all at once. He was shaking, panting aloud -- Duo was so hot, so tight, and Heero's cock was inside him, filling him...

Duo reached back, as though he were trying to find his braid, and froze a moment as loose, short hair met his fingers. He paused, took a deep breath. "I'm so glad I'm here with you! It's more important than anything!"

Heero leaned forward, cock nestled in Duo's ass, and placed a kiss on the back of his neck. "Beautiful. Short or long. Even blue. Want you."

"Heero, hold me, please! I'm yours, always yours!" Duo thrust back as he spoke.

Duo's push back made Heero arch his back, and another choked cry fought up from his belly. Panting loudly, uncaring, he slid out, the grip of Duo's ass delicious torment to his cock. He drove back in, smooth and forceful, then laid forward, chest against Duo's back. He wrapped one arm around Duo's chest, used it to brace himself as he pulled his hips back and thrust forward, forcing his way deep into Duo again and again. At the deepest moment of each plunge, he heard himself make a noise, sharp and guttural. He wrapped the other hand, still oiled, around Duo's cock, and hoped Duo was at least half as excited as he was, because he was not going to last long.

Long strokes, pausing for a moment within the welcoming depths, then pulling nearly all the way out -- he tried for that, to slow himself down, but nothing was going to hold off his need for release for very long. "Mine," he growled again. "Won't let you go."

"Could melt into you, Heero, live forever like this. I love you! For so long! Hard! Fast, God,Heero! So good!"

Words were beyond Heero. He felt everything begin to squeeze tight, low in his belly, hot and heavy. His grip on Duo tightened, as his thrusts became short, fast, brutal. He indicated his love, his promise to remain, the only way he could think to at that moment -- biting down on Duo's neck again, re-enforcing the mark he'd put there mere hours ago.

The heat and pleasure built until they exploded, nuclear fission within his body. He howled as he came, planting himself deep inside of Duo, the sound scarcely muffled by Duo's flesh in his mouth. It felt like heat was pouring out of him into Duo through his cock and his mouth, creating a circuit of pure pleasure. He kept thrusting, continued stroking Duo's cock, determined to bring his love with him.


	11. Chapter 11

Stradivarius

by Nix Winter

This is a flashback interlude... It's Trowa+Quatre, set in the war.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.

Notes: Sometime soon, this will be beta'ed :)

Other Notes: My interpretation of Duo, his past, how traumatic some events were over others is part of my understanding of the character and filtered through my perception and own experience. I do owe Episode Zero and highly recommend it. As for when Duo's first sexual experience was or what his ethics are in relation to monogamy, that's something between him and Heero, and probably varies from one Duo to another.

Trowa's Flashback.

He'd promised. Madrid by the third of July. His fingers brushed lightly, silently over the inside of his gloves, the soft black leather worn and just a little too large. Nanashi's last week had been spent surveying the factory he was now deep inside. Tall, slender, with dark brown hair that hung to one side of his face, and green eyes, he was of two selves.

Breathing slow, easy, he counted the seconds until the expected guard came around the corner on his first rounds. Flesh is so soft, even armored softness punctuates, at the throat, the eyes, Nanashi-shi moved instinct and training, devoid of emotion and the guard hit the wall of never. Sound, so unintended, a grunt, breath caught through a crushing windpipe, eyes suddenly bloodshot, and Nanashi-shi looped the man over his shoulder, at half his weight and ten times his determination, and they disappeared into the darker hall of Nanshi-shi's target.

The building had been new once, probably not long after Nanashi had been born in a colony far away. It was dark and nameless, defiled and yet the walls and circuitry were still sound. The body rested under the elevator, far down in maintenance pathings that the current users of the building either knew nothing of or cared nothing for. It would survive the blast down there, a skeleton of war. All in black, his face streaked with dark and grays, only the green of his eyes life and color, he flowed up the metal stairs. Soft cotton quilted shoes left no sound, disturbed no innocent molecules in passing, as a boy with no soul does not breath.

It was late. Night when no one judges and the callous turn on few lights to do their work. He expected only five people in the building. The guard he'd already met, three workers to move pallets of the profitable narcotics, and one woman who went over the accounts, the real accounts for OZ while the rest of the day shift drank beers and talked about how at least they had jobs and weren't in the military. Crouching, he pushed the door open and, just slightly, not much and listened to her mutter. Not so much with words, but the irregularity of her breath, held, grunted, drawn in sharply. She didn't like their numbers. Profit was only had when clients received packages and distributed the drugs. They'd been short on receiving payments.

Nanashi did not like narcotics.

They would need to hire new drivers.

Of course, they were going to need a new distribution center.

He smiled, thin lips, pale, but the green of his eyes darkened as the first puff of her cigarette swirled out over his head. If one has to die, let it be on a break.

His pistol was ceramic, matte black and when it snarled, it did so silently, with a bullet that disintegrated into thousands of tiny bits of shrapnel slicing hot as laser through flesh. It left no scent, no light. It had no name, and it came from his home, a bastard tool from L3.

The heat of the bullet left no blood to run down her face. It's speed left her expression vague and frustrated, indolent in it's way, certain of a bad day, certain of her right to carry on as she had been. He put out her cigarette.

Why he checked the inventory, he wasn't sure. Nanashi-shi wanted nothing that the gun he carried didn't want. Nanashi-koe knew the moment he scanned the inventory.

There was another boy. The thought of him made the room light, made breath suddenly sweet. He had golden hair, soft curls that only light and air could touch. Even in the darkness, light would find them, glide along the arc of their being. His voice could linger, and touch so deeply into Nanashi that he'd remembered smiling, found the taste of food, and on the third of July, in Madrid, Nanashi would sit at a table and be Trowa Barton sitting at a table with Quatre Rabera Winner. The world would continue until at least the third of July.

There on the list of inventory, was something small and mostly useless, a trinket to be sold by OZ to fund wars that killed and left children with empty souls. It was a Stradivarius. Nanashi-koe wanted it. Want was a deep breath, connected to an emotion that opened his chest and made him jittery. Nanashi-shi did not like this feeling, did not like want. To hand over this trinket to the blond angel of light and watch him open it, and see him smile and to have done something well… to have brought a smile to the angel's face; Nanashi-shi would have to understand or at least tolerate.

He tugged off one of the slightly too large gloves and slipped the memory card into the computer using only this thumb and forefinger, leaving no prints. Not that there would be anything left in the building, but careful was appropriate.

There had been a plan to this mission, timing. The bombs were timed, already initiated. L1 tech, they were a little less adaptive and he had no way to slow them. So he had ten minutes to find crate 985 and remove the violin. His pistol didn't have the range to pick off the remaining three workers and he would prefer for OZ to wonder, speculate about the cause of the blast for at least a few hours, so that he would have an easier time making it out of France.

It took another thirty seconds to get a better idea of the location of the crate from the computer, before Heero's virus fully grabbed the machine, using all it's resources to replicate and expand. Nine minutes, thirty seconds.

Long past, so long past that there had been a name, he had lived where people could fly. It was one leaping jump to the rail on the catwalk. Body of grace and balance at home with less gravity rather than more, he shoved off, into the space between the second floor and the first, spinning, arms out, as he landed, knees bending on the hard floor, a rush and his of disturbed air his only sound. Running both gloves back on, he counted off the crates, three to a stack, until he had the right column. From a running go, he jumped, caught a bar mid way up that was used for a rolling chain and hissed from the lines cutting into his hands before he'd already swung and brought himself up to the bar. Below him the workers were muttering, wondering. Six minutes, seventeen seconds.

The crate was nailed. He snarled. A Stradivarius in a crate would be well packed. He rocked the crate. One of the workers screamed. Nanashi-shi smiled.

Two minutes, nine seconds. He walked away from building, violin case in hand. Red trailed down from a cut above his left eye, a single trail down his nose.

Negative five minutes, thirty-two seconds. Nanashi threw his leg over his motorcycle, the violin now strapped to his back. Shi and Koe slept. Fire engines screamed towards the red that reached four stories behind him, crackling louder than his engine when he revved it.

Third, July, lunch time in Sintra.

Warm air, moist and tickled with salt, and Trowa paused at the bottom of the stairs. The room he'd rented was in an old villa with pink stucco walls and bright yellow curtains that fluttered in the breeze as if the color could never fade from them.

Jeans and a pale green shirt, unbuttoned at the color, and he was freshly shaven, eyes dancing with possibilities. He'd enrolled in school, a transfer from America this time, tuition paid for the full year. Today was Saturday though and he had free time.

His hair, longer than the school liked, but forgiven due to the nicely paid tuition and a letter from his mother about his grief over his cousin, well this dark hair shadowed his face, hiding one side, letting the other smile and hum through the streets.

The café they'd picked was closer to the water, and he could see Quatre a block away. The blond waved, and Trowa picked up his pace. He wasn't going to run. The smile at the back of his throat fluttered cool against the July heat. At least on L3 they could turn the temperature down if they wanted to, but there was something, something uncontrollable about the heat, about seeing Quatre smile in his direction. He had no control over this flutter and how much he wanted to grab the other pilot, pull him close and feel his heart still beating.

It was just the heat, too, which had no control over that put color over his cheeks.

Quatre stood, bowed slightly as Trowa neared the table. "I'm so glad to see you! I hear the transfer went well?"

"Of course," Trowa said, voice calm, not at all flustered or too happy, or alive for the first time since the last time he'd been near Quatre. "I brought you a small gift."

He handed the case over and sat, taking the glass of nearly melted ice water and sipping. "If it's missing anything, I'm sorry."

The case took a moment to open, combinations that weren't known and well therefore took a bit of time, Quatre smiled. Trowa sipped the water, watched the light on Quatre's hair, the way the puzzle captivated the little Arab. "I'm sure it's fine. I didn't bring you a gift. You shall have to come home to my house. We have a pool."

Trowa turned the glass in his hands. Scars. Ugly scars. He couldn't very well say he couldn't swim. He wanted … Quatre to like his appearance. "Maybe we can see a movie."

The case opened and Quatre's eyes turned into pools, great big oceans of blue that Trowa could swim in to his soul's content. "Allah," the boy said, color chilling from his face. "Do you know what this is?"

"I knew it couldn't be happy until it was with you," Trowa said, because.. well, nothing could be happy unless it was with Quatre.


End file.
